


Contamination

by cosmicmewtwo



Series: Contamination [1]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Horror Elements, M/M, Post-Majin Buu Saga, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2018-10-29 06:07:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 63,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10848036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicmewtwo/pseuds/cosmicmewtwo
Summary: While training in the far reaches of space, Goku and Vegeta discover something alien beyond their understanding.





	1. Asepsis

“Well, how about that one there?” Goku suggested, reaching over Vegeta’s shoulder to point at a single, unremarkable dot on the console’s star-chart.

Vegeta lifted an eyebrow in irritation as he brushed Goku’s hand away from from the navigational screen, stopping him before he could mess with the touch-screen’s controls.

“Kakarot, would you please leave this to me?” Vegeta growled. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”

“Aw, come on, Vegeta,” Goku said, and further annoyed Vegeta by leaning down to rest his arms on the back of Vegeta’s seat. “You never listen to me.”

“If I considered your input, we’d end up launching ourselves headlong into a fucking black hole— which is what you were just pointing at, incidentally.”

“Oh.” A brief pause, and Vegeta bristled as Goku reached over Vegeta’s shoulder to point at the screen again. “Okay, how ‘bout that one?”

“Are you just pointing at random spots, Kakarot, or is there some method to your madness?”

“I dunno, that one looks nice, I guess.”

Vegeta let out a strained sigh as he pushed Goku’s hand away again. Regardless of their destination, they would have to settle on a planet soon—it had been two weeks since they had landed anywhere, and the atmosphere on their Capsule ship was quickly starting to feel claustrophobic. Even their intense training on the gravity deck was barely taking the edge off at this point.

Granted, Vegeta had spent much of his life on far smaller ships with much larger crews, but Goku wasn’t a typical travel companion—he simply had a way of taking up space that could make even the Hyperbolic Time Chamber feel like a fishbowl.

Vegeta’s swiped a gloved hand across the screen, skimming quickly through dense lists of data.

“This system might not be a bad choice, actually,” Vegeta muttered. The star that Goku had pointed out was a nameless red dwarf, orbited by several mid-size, rocky planets. They wouldn’t know the specifics until they sent a Capsule probe ahead to scout it, but the rough calculations showed that at least one of the planets might have a breathable atmosphere and liquid water. Gravity at three G. Most importantly, they could arrive there within a day.

Goku shrugged behind Vegeta. “Well, you’re the expert space captain.”

A smirk tugged at the corner of Vegeta’s mouth, threatening to break through his scowl. “Don’t think your sarcasm is lost on me, Kakarot.”

“Huh? I wasn’t being sarcastic,” Goku said. “I just figured you knew what you were talking about, seeing as you used to, well… you know, travel around the galaxy.”

Vegeta grimaced. Goku wasn’t exactly known for his tactfulness, but “ _travel around the galaxy_ ” was easily the most absurd euphemism Vegeta had ever heard for “ _work as a planet-purging mercenary for a ruthless galactic overlord._ ”

“I’ll send a probe now,” was all Vegeta said as he tapped twice on his screen. “We’ll know exactly what we’re heading to in a few hours.”

 

* * *

 

By Earth’s clock, it was evening when the results came back to them.

Vegeta was devouring the last bites of his meal while half-listening to Goku’s chatter when he heard an alarm chiming from the deck above.

“The probe’s back,” Vegeta said, and wasted no time pushing his plate away and leaving the table before Goku could react.

“Hey, aren’t you gonna finish your food?” Goku asked around a mouthful of half-chewed pork.

But Vegeta was already half-way up the narrow staircase to the bridge.

“You can have the rest,” he called back.

He slid into the pilot seat, and pressed his fingertip to the glowing alert that blinked up at him from the screen. Data on Kakarot’s planet of choice spilled down the screen in a stream of text and numbers. The atmosphere was compatible. The average surface temperature was slightly colder than Earth’s, but there were no major meteorological disturbances that would pose any obvious problems. Gravity: 3.24 Earth’s gravity. Rotational period: 14 hours. Planetary surface: mostly rocky crust, seventeen percent ocean-covered.

Vegeta scrolled quickly through the reams of data flowing in until he was satisfied that it met his most important condition: it was uninhabited. Or, at least, it showed no obvious signs of any advanced settlements—no pockets of Planet Trade Organization activity.

Vegeta didn’t want any uninvited company.

“Vegeta?”

Vegeta’s eyes flicked away from the screen, and found Goku climbing up the last steps to the bridge.

“How’s it look?” Goku asked.

“It will do,” Vegeta said as he tapped a few buttons on the navigational screen. “It’s a perfectly unremarkable planet as far as I can tell, but it will do.”

“Man, I just hope it’s better than that awful jungle planet we landed on last time. I swear I still feel itchy from the all the bug bites—that made Earth’s mosquitoes look like nothing.”

“If I recall correctly,” said Vegeta, unable to resist a smirk. “You picked that one, too.”

Goku rubbed at the back of his neck. “Ah, yeah,” he admitted. “I had hoped it might be a good spot for hunting.”

“Well, maybe we’ll have better luck with this new world,” Vegeta muttered. “But I doubt it. The probe picked up no obvious signs of widespread life, animal or otherwise.”

“Maybe fishing then?”

Vegeta swiped his hand across the screen, and it went dark under his fingertips.

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” he said, turning away from the console to face Goku. “You’ll be lucky to find an algae bloom.”

Goku shrugged. “Maybe next time, then.”

“Not every planet is teeming with life, Kakarot,” Vegeta pointed out. “For every three Earths or Nameks or Yardrats out there, there’s at least one dark, lifeless chunk of rock to balance it out.”

Goku’s face took on a sad, almost childlike disappointment. “Seems like an awful waste of space.”

Vegeta turned away from Goku, and stood from his seat. “Don’t be too disappointed. Healthy, fertile planets tend to be targets for those who wish to take them. And I don’t know about you, but I just want to train—not get sidetracked by a spat with some Planet Trade faction.”

Goku furrowed his brows. “How could that be a problem? Frieza’s been dead for years.”

“And god only knows what splinter groups have popped up in the power vacuum left behind,” Vegeta muttered. “I’ve been on Earth for more than a decade, Kakarot. I have no intel, no access to any of my old PTO planetary databases. We’re flying essentially blind out here.”

Goku chewed on his lip for a moment, as if deep in thought—though Vegeta often doubted he were capable of such a thing.

“How long until we get there?” he asked.

“Ten, eleven hours. Enough time to sleep.”

“Enough time for a spar, too,” Goku hinted.

Vegeta sighed. Gods, he was sick of the gravity deck. But what else was there to do?

“Fine,” he huffed. “One hour. That’s it—then I’m going to bed.”

Goku slapped him on the back as he passed Vegeta. “Deal. I’ll race you down there.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes, but Goku was already halfway down the steps to the decks below.


	2. Latency

When Vegeta returned to his quarters for the evening, he was annoyed to find Goku sitting on his bunk.

“Wrong bunk, Kakarot,” he snapped at him before turning away to finish towelling off his hair, still damp from his post-spar shower.

“Yeah, I know,” Goku said, and he leaned back against the bulkhead with his arms crossed behind his head. Vegeta bristled at the display—his quarters were claustrophobically small as they were, and to have Goku encroach on what little space he had set Vegeta on edge.

“I tried to go to sleep early, but I’m too restless,” Goku went on. “I keep tossing and turning.”

“There are tranquilizers in the medbay,” Vegeta said flatly, hanging his towel up near what passed for a storage locker.

“How did you do it for all these years?”

Vegeta turned toward him then, one eyebrow raised. “How did I do what?”

“This,” said Goku, pulling one arm from behind his head to gesture at the cramped confines of the room. “How did you stay cooped up on ships and stuff all the time?”

Vegeta rolled his eyes. “You’ve hardly been stuck here long enough to have ship-fever, Kakarot.”

“I guess not,” said Goku, and he looked away to stare at the small porthole embedded in the opposite bulkhead. Not that there was much to see there—just blackness and streaks of light as they accelerated through subspace.

Vegeta sat down on the opposite end of the bunk, putting as much space between himself and Goku as he could manage. He hoped Goku would take the hint.

He didn’t—Goku remained sprawled across the bed like he owned it, and he turned his gaze away from the porthole back to Vegeta.

“Well at least I have you for company,” Goku laughed. “I don’t know how you ever did this alone—like back when you were training to become a Super Saiyan.”

“It didn’t matter to me,” Vegeta muttered. “I had a single, all-consuming goal back then.”

“Yeah,” Goku sighed, and paused for a moment. “Kinda makes you wonder where we’re gonna go from here, eh?”

“There’s always room to become more powerful,” Vegeta muttered, though he felt inclined to agree with Goku’s sentiment—what exactly was his ambition at this point? “You can show me how to achieve that ridiculous Super Saiyan Three transformation, for starters.”

“I dunno, it’s really kind of an unwieldy power to deal with—but if you really want to, I mean…”

“What I really want,” Vegeta said as he leveled a side-glare in Goku’s direction, “is for you to get out of my bunk so I can get some sleep before we make planetfall.”

Goku sat up then, pulling his hands from behind his head to hold up his palms in defeat.

“All right, all right,” he chuckled. “No need to get cranky with me, I’ll get out so you can get your beauty sleep.”

Goku flashed a teasing grin before finally pulling himself up from the bunk, and Vegeta took the opportunity to quickly pull back the covers and slump down on the mattress.

“Don’t forget to slide the hatch closed behind you,” Vegeta grunted as he adjusted the pillow beneath his head.

“Yeah, yeah—you want me to tuck you in, too?”

“Fuck off, Kakarot.”

Goku laughed, and Vegeta responded by curling onto his side to face the bulkhead.

“G’night, Vegeta,” Goku said before finally leaving the compartment, and Vegeta listened as he closed the hatch as instructed, and padded across the passageway to his own quarters.

Finally, Vegeta closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

The details of Vegeta’s nightmare shook apart almost the instant he woke up. He had felt the ship change its thrust—the jerk as it exited subspace and began the slow deceleration on the edge of their new star system—and the shift had been enough to jolt him into consciousness. He had always been a cautious, light sleeper, and space travel had always compounded that

He could already feel the sheen of sweat that clung to his skin beginning to cool, and whatever had tormented him in his sleep was nearly dissolved from his memory. So many of his dreams played out the same way: vaporous, lightless, punctuated only by the vague forms of shapeless demons with shifting faces, things with terribly white skin and thin, reptilian lips.

  
Vegeta tried not to think about it too hard, blinking away the last dregs of his dream as he roused to full consciousness. He turned over in his bunk, facing away from the bulkhead to stare at the port hole opposite of him.

The void stared back at him. He wondered why Bulma had even designed a ship with view ports—so rarely was there anything to see but blackness in every direction, pockmarked only by the faint glow of distant stars. It was almost enough to make him miss Earth’s painfully blue sky. Almost—part of him felt sick just thinking about the planet they were traveling further and further away from each second.

After all, it wasn’t the first time Vegeta had fled to the stars to escape his failures on Earth.

This time, though, it had all been Goku’s idea. After weeks of pestering Vegeta for a proper fight, he had suddenly proposed that maybe they should take their training in space—a Saiyan vacation, of sorts. Vegeta hated the idea at first. His knee-jerk reaction had been to say no, absolutely not—he’d been deliberately avoiding Goku as much as possible after the tournament and Buu and everything else; why would he want to be isolated in a cramped ship, light-years away from everything, with no one but Kakarot to keep him company?

But Goku had insisted.

“I think we need some time away, Vegeta,” Goku had said to him after cornering him alone, and Vegeta had wondered if Goku felt it then, too. How off things had felt in the aftermath of Buu. Vegeta thought it was just him—that maybe he was a victim of some lingering side-effect of Babidi’s possession, or the Fusion, or having been killed and resurrected all over again—but nothing had felt right since. Like his whole existence had shifted slightly out of focus.

And so he had agreed, hoping that maybe some time away would correct his perspective, as if venturing out to alien planets would make him somehow feel less alien in his own home.

Bulma had been accommodating. The new Capsule ship was a prototype, and she had muttered something about needing a test-pilot for it, anyway—might as well let a couple of Saiyans take it for a test-drive.

“We’ll be back in a few months,” Vegeta had assured her, but she hardly protested. She had hardly said anything, in fact, and her rundown of the ship and its systems had been clinical and to-the-point.

But then, that’s how most of their interactions had been since the tournament.

Vegeta tried to not to think about it too much.

He swung his legs over the side the bunk as he rubbed a hand across his face.

“Cap4,” Vegeta grunted. He looked away from the porthole and turned to face the commscreen embedded into the matte, white wall near the room’s hatch. “How much longer until we make planetfall?”

“Two hours and forty-three standard minutes until Capsule 4 enters planned orbit around RD399-C,” the ship’s computer chirped in a digital facsimile of a human voice.

“Great,” Vegeta muttered as he began to dig around in the storage compartment beneath his bunk, pulling out his boots and a set of armor. “Cap4, set lights to medium brightness.”

The room flooded with fluorescent light, and Vegeta quickly slipped into his standard blue battle suit. _If I’m lucky_ , he thought as he pulled on his gloves and boots, _maybe I can enjoy a few moments of peace and quiet before Goku wakes_.

Vegeta slid open the room’s hatch as quietly as he could manage and left his quarters, hoping Goku was too deeply asleep to hear him padding down the corridor.

 

* * *

 

Vegeta tapped a few commands onto the console’s touch screen, and leaned back in his seat as the bridge’s main view screen hummed to life. A smattering of distant stars appeared on the image feed, and the planet they headed towards was barely visible against the vast blackness—at this distance, it was still just a grey smudge, so small that Vegeta could hold up a fingertip and obscure it completely. Beyond it, its dwarf sun glowed larger in the distance.

Vegeta lifted a metal canteen to his lips, taking a sip of hot coffee as he surveyed the image before him. It was a truly unremarkable star system, all things considered. Even Earth—isolated backwater that it was—belonged to a more vibrant neighbourhood than this.

“Is that where we’re going?”

Vegeta turned his head slightly to see Goku walking up behind him. He was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants and nothing else, his hair sticking up at disheveled angles from where he had obviously been sleeping on it. He rubbed blearily at one eye.

“Yes,” Vegeta said around the lip of his mug, while gesturing toward the view screen. “Enjoy this breathtaking vista while you have the chance.”

““Doesn’t look like much from here, does it?” Goku yawned as he slid into the seat next to Vegeta. “How long ‘til we get there?”

“Less than an hour. You should get dressed.”

“I wanna eat first. You up for some breakfast?”

“I’ve already eaten,” Vegeta declined. “There’s plenty left over in the galley.”

“Great, I’m starving,” Goku said, patting his stomach, although Vegeta noted he looked almost disappointed at the thought of eating alone. “I’m gonna head down to eat then—let me know when we’re almost there.”

Goku stood up from his chair and moved to leave, but turned to face the view screen just before he reached the staircase.

“Does our new planet have a name yet?” he asked.

“It has an alphanumeric code assigned to it in the navigational charts,” Vegeta said before drinking down the last mouthful of his coffee. “But no, it doesn’t look like any Earthling astronomers ever graced it with a proper name.”

“Well, we should name it, shouldn’t we?”

Vegeta lifted an eyebrow. “Did you have anything in mind?”

“I dunno,” Goku laughed, “Earth 2?”

“Try harder, Kakarot,” Vegeta sighed. He tapped a few times on the console’s touchscreen, and the image on the viewscreen disappeared, fading to black. He stood up from his chair and tossed his drink container to Goku, who startled before catching it.

“Take that back to the galley, would you? I’m going to prep the landing pod.”

With that, Vegeta turned and exited the bridge before Goku had a chance to argue.


	3. Pathogen

The planet was colder than either Goku or Vegeta had expected.

Vegeta had picked a landing site far from either of the planet’s icy poles, but the wind was chilling all the same. The planet’s sun was little more than a dim smudge clouded by the overcast sky, struggling to warm the rough, broken terrain that stretched out around them. It mattered little to Vegeta, whose suit and armor protected him from the worst of it—but still he felt the bite of it against his cheeks every time the wind caught his skin.

Goku, meanwhile, stood aside as Vegeta packed their landing pod into a capsule, rubbing at his bare arms.

“This place is chillier than I thought it’d be,” he said, watching as Vegeta filed the capsule away into a metal kit. “Almost makes me miss that jungle planet.”

“I have extra sets of battle armor if you’re that cold,” Vegeta said as he pulled open the seal of their CapsuleHab—essentially a reinforced tent—and packed the Capsule kit inside.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with my gi,” Goku declined. “It’s comfier.”

Vegeta shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He paused to stretch out his arms and twist his neck side to side, loosening up stiffened tendon and muscle. The journey down from the ship had been short, but cramped, and Vegeta was itching to take advantage of the open space before him.

“If you really want to warm up,” he said, aiming a taunting glare in Goku’s direction as sparks of blue electricity snapped suddenly around him, “you can give me a proper fight.”

A smirk tugged at Goku’s lips as he watched Vegeta flash into his Super Saiyan form.

“Sounds good to me.”

 

* * *

 

Their blows echoed across the barren landscape like thunderclaps, each hit and kick sounding out like supersonic bursts above the howling wind. For any casual observer, it would have been a struggle to follow them with the naked eye—they became little more than golden blurs, phasing in and out of sight, moving at speeds that bordered on impossible.

Vegeta’s blood roiled with the thrill of it.

Their fight at the tournament had left Vegeta painfully unsatisfied—the battle had amounted to nothing, and Vegeta’s failure despite having debased himself with Babidi’s possession still gnawed at him. It felt good to face Kakarot like this, in open air with natural gravity, with no distractions or bystanders to worry about—they could strip the entire planet to its core with their raw power alone if they desired.

“Come on, Kakarot,” Vegeta taunted, blocking Goku’s fist just before it connected with his face. “I didn’t travel ten thousand light years for you to give up this easily!”

Goku roared and moved to hit him again, but Vegeta dodged. Vegeta responded with a knee to Goku’s abdomen, but Goku dodged his leg and twisted away. Each blow was met with a deflection, each action met with its opposite—to Vegeta it started to feel less like combat, and more like a dance. Like something was drawing them into one another—as if some thread of their Fusion hung invisibly between them, pulling them into a frustrating sync.

Vegeta felt a deep-seated anger rise like acid in his throat.

It only took a moment of distraction for Goku to finally land a blow against him—his fist collided with Vegeta’s jaw, hard enough that Vegeta could feel himself flicker out of his Super Saiyan state for the briefest moment. Vegeta flipped backwards to dodge Goku’s next hit, but Goku feinted, slamming him with a powerful ki blast instead.

The energy slammed Vegeta in the chest before he could react, and he was flung backward towards the ground. The jagged terrain of the planet rushed up to meet him as he fell; with a dizzying speed, Vegeta’s body crashed through one of the spikes of rock that punctured the landscape like horns, and he finally slammed into the ground, rock and rubble and dust trailing behind him as he slid to a stop.

It was several moments before Vegeta reacted, and he groaned face-down in the dirt. He took a quick inventory of his injuries: there were multiple gashes where rock had torn through his suit and lacerated his skin, blood dripped through his lips from where the inside of his cheek had been cut against his own teeth, and his armor was cracked above his sternum from where the ki blast had hit. Superficial injuries, mostly—as usual, the most serious injury had been to his ego.

Vegeta pushed himself to his hands and knees, wiping the blood from his mouth on the back of his glove. Behind him, he heard Goku landing on the ground, his boots tapping lightly as they hit the dirt.

“You okay, Vegeta? I didn’t mean to smash you into that rock like that—”

“Don’t apologize,” Vegeta said tersely, and he began to pull himself from the ground. Goku came around to Vegeta’s side and held out a hand to help him up, but Vegeta deliberately ignored it. “It was a fair hit.”

“Well, maybe we should call it a day,” Goku suggested. “It looks like the sun’s starting to set. And I’m getting hungry.”

“Aren’t you always?” Vegeta growled, although Vegeta was hesitant to admit that beyond the more urgent aches and pains that lanced through his body, he was starting to feel his own pangs of hunger.

Vegeta finally pulled himself to his feet, and he started to brush the dust from his suit. “You know what, fine. I’m throwing in the towel for today. Let’s go back to camp.”

Goku nodded before lifting two fingers to his forehead, once again offering his hand for Vegeta to take. Vegeta’s nose wrinkled with something halfway between annoyance and disgust, but he reached out for Goku’s palm anyway, his fingers just barely brushing against Goku’s before something suddenly distracted him.

In the distance, Vegeta thought he saw something flicker.

“What the hell is that?”

Goku lifted an eyebrow as Vegeta pulled his hand away. “Sorry?”

“There’s something over there,” Vegeta insisted, pointing to where he could swear he saw something like metal glinting in the dim sunlight.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Goku, but Vegeta had already begun to stalk away in that direction.

He was curious. Vegeta’s original scans of the planet had turned up nothing of any note—no cites, no structures, and no ruins that suggested that anyone had ever been here. The life they had confirmed was sparse at best—growths of moss-like plants dotted the landscape sporadically, but if there were evidence of any complex ecosystems on the planet, Vegeta hadn't been able to find it.

He moved toward the glinting object, and slowly it began to take shape. It was definitely an artificial material—a shining, off-white alloy that Vegeta couldn’t immediately identify. It looked like it had been torn around the edges—rough and uneven, as if someone had ripped it from a greater whole.

Vegeta approached the object to examine it more closely, and realized that part of it was buried in the dirt. He grabbed the edge of it and pulled, and as it came out of the ground he saw that it was much larger than he had anticipated. It looked to Vegeta almost like a torn piece of paneling from some kind of transport—maybe debris from a ship.

“Aw, come on, Vegeta, it’s just a piece of junk,” Goku called out as he came up behind Vegeta. “I’m really starting to get hungry—”

“Can you ignore your stomach for one second?” Vegeta snapped, glaring impatiently at Goku. “Doesn’t this seem odd to you? To find something like this on a completely deserted planet?”

“I don’t know,” Goku admitted. “I haven’t really been to many deserted planets?”

Vegeta rolled his eyes before looking back at the object, rotating it in his hands to scrutinize it more closely. Two or three symbols appeared to be carved into it, over and over again, spiraling and repeating in a pattern that made no sense to Vegeta. He ran his fingers over the symbols, as if examining them by touch might clarify their meaning, but they felt ragged and uneven, like they had been carved with the edge of a rock.

“What are those markings?” Goku asked.

“I don’t know.” Vegeta shook his head. There were dozens of languages and scripts common throughout the galaxy that he could at least recognize, but this was completely unfamiliar to him.

“What do you think they mean?”

Vegeta ignored Goku’s question; he found himself distracted by more of the same material glinting under the dirt just a few feet away. He moved toward it and brushed the dirt off with his boot.

The same, repeating symbols glinted up at him.

Vegeta looked up, towards the horizon, and realized there were at least a dozen more similar shards of material in his line of sight, zig-zagging into the distance in a broken line. They were so worn down and half-covered in earth that it had been easy to mistake them for rocks before.

But this clearly wasn’t something natural.

“That is kind of weird, isn’t it?” Goku asked, stating what was already plainly obvious to Vegeta.

“Who the hell would leave something like this here?” Vegeta asked, more to himself than to Goku. If the intent were to leave a message, why not leave a transponder, or some kind of recording device?

“Maybe they’re meant to show a path,” Goku suggested, pointing toward the horizon, “like someone was trying to mark the way to something.”

Vegeta stared in the direction Goku pointed. The only remarkable landmark that he could see was something that looked like a dark, stagnant lake—it looked to him more like a tar pit than any useful source of water.

“Maybe,” Vegeta murmured. The wind picked up again, blowing cold air across Vegeta’s face, but it wasn’t enough to explain the chill that snaked down his spine. “Or maybe it’s a warning.”

“A warning?” Goku asked, raising an eyebrow skeptically. “Against what?”

Vegeta looked back down at the original object clutched in his hands. The symbols were so haphazardly scrawled across it that he couldn’t see anything but desperation in their meaning.

“Well if I could make sense of this writing, then I would tell you,” he said impatiently. He rotated the object back and forth, as if adjusting the angle might somehow be the key to translating the message. “It could be anything. We could be standing on a radioactive deposit, or an active volcano, or maybe this whole area is a hot-spot for violent weather conditions—hell if I know.”

Goku scratched at his temple. “I thought you scanned for stuff like that?”

“I did,” Vegeta shot back defensively. “Maybe the message is exceptionally old and no longer relevant. Or... maybe it’s nothing. Maybe this is all meaningless alien graffiti that says nothing else except ‘some asshole was here.’”

“Yeah,” said Goku, but the slight uneasiness that had crept into his voice wasn’t lost on Vegeta. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s nothing. All I know is that I'm going to starve if we don't head back to camp soon."

Vegeta looked down at the object for a long moment before finally throwing it back to the ground. Regardless of its meaning, he had no hope of translating it.

“Fine,” he finally conceded. He was here on this miserable planet to train, after all—not conduct some hopeless xenoarcheology survey. “Take us back, then.”

Vegeta stuck out his arm stiffly, and Goku gently reached for his hand. Just as the wind began to kick up, Goku transported them away.

 

* * *

 

The planet’s brisk rotation took them quickly into night. Only a brief, hazy sunset illuminated the sky before the sun dipped below the jagged horizon, and Goku and Vegeta ended up eating their meager supper under the stars.

Vegeta had been frugal in packing their landing supplies—a choice he regretted as he dismally picked at his foil-wrapped, prepackaged meal with a fork. Astronaut food, Goku had called it, and Vegeta was forced to wonder how much Earth hated its space explorers that this was the kind of meal named for them.

Goku, naturally, had inhaled his entire portion in under a minute, and was now settling in on the opposite side of their campfire, a thermal blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

“Why don’t you go in the Hab if you’re cold?” Vegeta asked him, raising an eyebrow as Goku tightened the blanket around himself. “If you get frostbite from staying out here too long, don’t even think of crying to me about it.

“I wanted to look at the stars for a bit,” Goku said, lifting his gaze to the sky. The sky was moonless, and aside from their small campfire, there was no light on the ground to drown out the stars. “I like how they look different on every planet. Even the Milky Way looks different here.”

“That’s because we’re closer to the galactic center here,” Vegeta coughed, nearly gagging as he tried to swallow a particularly tough chunk of freeze-dried meat.

Goku didn’t seem to notice. His gaze continued to sweep dreamily across the sky as Vegeta begrudgingly choked down the last bites of his meal. “Which one do you think is the Sun?”

“I doubt we can see it from here,” Vegeta muttered, finally setting his foil meal tray aside. “No more than we can see this planet’s sun from Earth.”

Goku blinked up at stars for several long moments, and Vegeta was just beginning to relax in the brief silence before Goku’s eyes were suddenly upon him.

“When I was training on Yardrat,” Goku asked suddenly, “is it true you came looking for me?”

Vegeta blinked at the strange question. “Yes,” he admitted, and looked away from Goku to stare into the campfire instead. Gods, that had been such a long time ago—why was Kakarot asking about it now, all these years later? “Why?”

Goku scratched the back of his head before looking back up at the sky. “It’s just… how exactly did you plan on finding me out there?” Goku laughed. “The more we travel out here together, the smaller it makes me feel. Like it never really dawned on me all this time how crazy huge the galaxy really is—it would have been like finding a needle in a million haystacks.”

Vegeta coughed a bitter laugh under his breath. “I greatly overestimated my ability to track your ki,” he said. “Other than that, I admit I didn’t have much of a plan.” Vegeta idly ran his fingers through the dirt, tossing a few pebbles into the fire. He hoped Goku would shut up or change the subject—it was embarrassing to think of the senseless, impulsive months he’d wasted on that desperate search.

“Well, if you had to track me down today, I’m sure it would be a lot easier.”

Vegeta cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Goku rubbed his arms beneath the blanket, as if fending off a fresh chill. “Well, since we fused—you mean you haven’t noticed it, too?”

Vegeta felt his entire body stiffen. “Noticed what?” he said through gritted teeth, but he already knew exactly what Goku was about to say.

“You know when I use Instant Transmission?” Goku explained. “I can’t just go anywhere, right—I gotta lock onto a specific ki. But if the ki I’m trying to focus on is too far away… well, it’s no use. I can’t do it. But…”

Vegeta’s felt his hands tighten into fists, but Goku went on.

“... since we fused? I feel like I can sense you anywhere. Even when I’m not trying to focus on you, sometimes it feels like you’re right there. Like if you were on the other side of the universe, I bet I could find you and teleport there in a heartbeat. It’s weird, right?” Goku looked to Vegeta again, his eyes wider than before. “You really haven’t felt it, Vegeta?”

Of course Vegeta had felt it—only this whole time he had been trying to ignore it, deny it, brush it off as yet another part of him that still felt bruised and raw since Buu had been defeated and the dust had settled. But now Goku was confirming his worst fears: The Fusion was intended to be irreversible, but it hadn’t been—and apparently that wasn’t going to be without consequence.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Vegeta spat, trying to quell the fury that burned up suddenly from his chest and into his throat. 

“What?” Goku said, his eyes filling with concern that only infuriated Vegeta more. “I’m sorry—I didn’t—”

“Forget it, Kakarot,” Vegeta said as rushed to lift himself to his feet. “I’m going to sleep. The night is short here and we only have a few hours until sunrise. You should quit your rambling and go to bed, too.”

“Vegeta—” Goku began to plead, but Vegeta had already stepped into the CapsuleHab and was closing the seal behind him.

“Put out the fire before you come in,” Vegeta said flatly, and disappeared into the Hab before Goku could say another word.

 

* * *

 

Vegeta was wrapped in his sleeping bag, still wide awake, when Goku finally joined him inside.

Goku fumbled for several moments as he unfurled his own sleeping bag in the dark, and then spent another minute falling into the side of the hab as he struggled to pull his boots off. Vegeta fumed silently at Goku’s noisy performance—he sounded less like a nimble, Saiyan warrior, and more like Bulma drunkenly stumbling to bed after a particularly long party.

Finally, Vegeta heard the rustle of fabric as Goku crawled into his bag and settled in. Vegeta allowed his eyes to fall shut, hoping for at least a few hours of sleep, but a sudden whisper in the dark brought him back to alertness.

“Vegeta?”

Vegeta begrudgingly cracked an eye open. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Goku murmured after a long pause. “I… I didn’t mean to upset you earlier?”

Vegeta’s jaw clenched, and he felt something like guilt uncoil in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps he had been too quick to lose his temper.

“It’s fine, Kakarot,” he muttered. “Just… go to sleep.”

Vegeta closed his eyes again, and after a few minutes of silence, he was almost certain that Goku had drifted off to sleep. But that would have been too easy—he soon heard Goku turn over in his sleeping bag, and Vegeta knew without looking that Goku was staring at him from across the Hab, searching him out in the dark.

“Vegeta?” Goku said again.

“Yes?” Vegeta sighed.

“I’m glad we did this,” Goku said. “Come out here to train, I mean, just you and me. I’m really glad you came with me—I really didn’t think you would, at first. But it’s—it’s nice to spend some time away, you know?”

“You had seven years to ‘spend some time away,’” Vegeta pointed out, and was surprised by the bitter edge that seeped into his voice.

Goku fell silent for a moment before continuing.

“I guess you’re right,” he said, quieter than before. “But… Other World was different. And coming back to Earth was harder than I thought."

Vegeta turned over in his bag to face Goku. There were a few feet between them, but even in the darkness Vegeta managed to find Goku’s eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, maybe I just expected everything to go back to normal too fast,” Goku said, shaking his head. “But I just feel… out of place? I mean, so much happened while I was gone—Gohan’s all grown up, and I have all this lost time with Goten, and Chi-Chi—it’s just, I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s like she hardly even wants—”

Goku abruptly bit down on his lip mid-sentence and looked away from Vegeta, like he was too embarrassed to meet his gaze.

“Never mind, it’s not important—I’m just rambling.” He let out a weak laugh. “Sorry, Vegeta. I’m sure you just wanna go to sleep.”

Vegeta didn’t want to probe into Goku’s business, but part of him felt a strange relief knowing he wasn’t the only one who had been feeling ill-at-ease on Earth for months now.

So he merely nodded. “Yes,” he murmured. “You should go to sleep, too.”

Goku turned away to lie on his back, and at this point Vegeta’s eyelids were growing stubbornly heavy. He tightened the material of the sleeping bag around him as he settled in to sleep.

“You think anyone else has ever been right here, like us now?” Goku asked, his rambling taking on a slower, groggier quality, as if he were talking to himself more than to Vegeta “Sleeping right here on this weird planet, under the stars?”

Vegeta could only think back to the strange debris they had found earlier, and a cold uneasiness shifted in his chest. He tried to push the strange symbols and their unknowable meaning from his mind.

“Who knows, Kakarot,” was all he could think to say.


	4. Prodrome

Their second day on the planet’s surface was even colder than the first. A thick cloud-cover moved in to blot out the sun entirely, and by afternoon a harsh rain was sweeping across the ragged landscape, drenching Goku and Vegeta as they launched into combat.

Vegeta attacked Goku with fresh vigor, harder than he had yesterday—he had no intention of repeating his clumsy performance from the day before. His body still ached in places from where he had collided with the planet’s surface, but the pain was a distant sensation in the heat of battle.

But Goku was relentless. Vegeta moved quickly to deflect Goku’s hits, grappling and tumbling with him midair, but the slickness of the rain made it difficult to keep hold of him for long. Vegeta threw himself backward, ascending to his Super Saiyan form in a violent, crackling flash, and the rainwater coating his armor flash-boiled into steam that rose from him in waves. Goku quickly followed suit, his aura flashing gold like a beacon against the blackened sky.

Vegeta launched himself at Goku with renewed force, striking him in the jaw with a powerful hook and following up with an uppercut to the stomach. Goku stumbled backward, choking from the impact, and Vegeta swung at him with a roundhouse kick—but just before the kick landed, Goku blocked the hit and grabbed Vegeta’s leg, swinging him around and throwing him across the sky at a blistering speed.

Vegeta snarled as he spun away from Goku, only to have the breath knocked from his chest when his back collided into a jagged cliff of rock. Vegeta grit his teeth as he pulled himself out of the cliff face, the rock crumbling around him from the impact crater. He forced himself to ignore the stabbing pain that pulsed up and down his spine. He could see Goku hovering in the distance, his form little more than a bright glow behind sheets of rain, and Vegeta sped towards him.

But rather than facing Vegeta head-on, Goku retreated. He flashed in and out of sight as Vegeta approached him, pulling just out of reach every time Vegeta lunged closer. Vegeta growled as he chased after him, convinced that Goku was deliberately toying with him. And then Goku appeared to suddenly vanish altogether—the golden aura around Goku winked out as he abruptly powered down, and Vegeta lost sight of him in the downpour.

Vegeta cursed under his breath as he flew up higher, circling around the tall spires of rock that snaked up towards the sky, blindly searching for Goku in the torrents of rain. But Vegeta could still feel the pull of his ki as strongly as a compass drawn toward north—even with zero visibility, a game of stealth between them was pointless.

“Give it up, Kakarot!” Vegeta roared over the rain, moving toward a rocky outcrop where Goku’s presence felt strongest. “I didn’t come out here to play hide-and-seek with you—you can’t hide from me, don’t even try it—”

Vegeta felt Goku reappear suddenly behind him, and he spun around to land his fist in Goku’s face before Goku even had a chance to pull his two fingers away from his forehead. Goku cried out from the blow, blood gushing immediately from his nose, but Vegeta was merciless—he rounded upon Goku with a concentrated ki blast, and Goku was flung towards the ground from the force of it.

Vegeta lost sight of him again. He could feel Goku hundreds of meters away, somewhere far below—but Vegeta hadn’t heard him make impact with the ground, not above the howling wind and rain. Vegeta tore off in the direction where Goku’s energy felt strongest, desperate to find him before Goku could regain his bearings and attempt another surprise attack.

But before Vegeta could reach him, Goku’s ki signature abruptly blinked out of existence.

Vegeta halted mid-flight, jolting backwards like he had been kicked in the stomach. For a brief moment, he was almost relieved—it felt like a pin had been pulled out of his brain, finally freeing him from Goku’s constant, suffocating presence. But the relief was short-lived, quickly replaced by paranoia—Vegeta immediately suspected another trick, and his hunt for Goku became more frantic. He dove and looped through the rain, whipping his gaze back and forth in an attempt to catch a glimpse of Goku, but Goku failed to materialize.

A mounting fury soon gripped Vegeta as he flew lower, skimming just above the ground now. He couldn’t believe that Goku had found some secret way to sever their connection like this, and was now using it for little more than a childish trick to evade Vegeta. He was going to beat an explanation out of Goku the moment he found him, if he didn’t find a way to kill him first.

 _How?_ Vegeta’s mind raced. _How could he have managed to—_

A glint of metal caught Vegeta’s eye.

Vegeta slowed down before stopping altogether. Though the wind and rain had disturbed the earth below him, he slowly began to recognize the landscape he had stumbled upon—it was where he and Goku had been fighting the day before. Glimmering shards of white material breached the muddied ground like a line of broken, crooked teeth.

A sudden, icy panic closed around Vegeta’s chest.

“Kakarot!” he roared above the wind. His voice sounded hoarse, even to himself. “ _Kakarot!_ ”

Vegeta landed on the ground, nearly falling to his knees as he yielded to the planet’s gravity. He hadn’t meant to come this far—he would never have flown back here if he hadn’t been so caught up in pursuing Goku, but he hadn’t been paying attention. He knew it was irrational, but the entire landscape here felt wrong to him, tainted in a way he couldn’t explain—

He rushed across the ground, screaming Goku’s name. Goku didn’t respond, and Vegeta’s desperate search for Goku’s ki failed to turn up anything more than a lifeless emptiness that stretched endlessly across the planet’s surface. The panic that squeezed Vegeta’s heart soon flooded him with adrenaline, his fists shaking as he scoured the area, his pupils blown wide in the darkness as he searched for any orange shred of Goku’s gi. But once again his inattention to his immediate surroundings failed him—he felt the ground suddenly give way beneath his feet, and his boots sinking into water far deeper than any of the other rain puddles collecting on the ground.

It was a deep pool—like the bed of a quarry that had been filled with water. Only the liquid he had sunk into couldn’t be water—it was too blackened and thick, closer to oil than anything. Vegeta recognized it immediately as the tar pit he had seen the day before, but tar wasn’t quite an accurate descriptor, either. Sludge, maybe. Perhaps some kind of foul acid, judging by the prickling sensation that burned across his skin where the liquid seeped through the material of his leggings, and the choking, sulfuric stench that wafted from the pond’s surface.

Vegeta wrinkled his nose in disgust, cursing as he attempted to pull his legs out of the muck and haul himself back to shore. When he pulled himself out of the pit, he tried to shake his boots off, but the repulsive substance clung stubbornly to him. He bent down, trying to use the falling rain to wipe off as much as he could, but only succeeded in smearing it across his gloves in a sickly, black sheen. Vegeta continued to swear under his breath as he tried to shake his gloves clean, only to be distracted from his efforts by a sudden noise behind him.

It sounded like a deep gurgle, as if something had come bubbling up from the pit’s depths. Vegeta turned, and it was then that Vegeta finally saw the bright orange that he had been searching for. Goku’s gi. Goku was floating face-down in the pond, still half-submerged, black staining his skin and the material of his clothes. Vegeta felt his pulse stop in his chest.

“Kakarot!” he shouted, and without thinking Vegeta had already flown to where Goku was submerged, half-sinking in the sludge himself as he hauled Goku’s limp body out of the pool. Even with Goku’s body in his arms, Vegeta still couldn’t feel his ki. Vegeta refused to accept the implication of that, and dragged Goku to the ground, laying him down on a stretch of wet rock. He wiped frantically at Goku’s face, trying to rid him of the dark liquid clinging to his skin. “ _Kakarot_!”

Vegeta grabbed him by the shoulders and shook, as if he could somehow thrash the life back into him. When that failed, he hit Goku across the face with the palm of his hand, the slap hard enough to echo between the nearest cliffs.

Goku awoke.

Goku’s ki flickered back to life just as he rocked forward with a violent convulsion, rolling to his hands and knees to cough and sputter. He coughed up harsh mouthfuls of the dark ooze, choking and grabbing Vegeta’s arm for support as his entire body was wracked with painful waves of peristalsis.

It went on for several moments, Goku gasping and retching as he tried to purge the toxin from his lungs and stomach, and finally he took a deep, gasping breath before falling to his side.

“Kami,” he groaned.

Vegeta fell back on his haunches and pulled his hands through his hair, letting out a long breath of his own.

“Fuck,” he managed to gasp, unable to keep his voice from shaking. “Damn you to _hell_ , Kakarot, I thought you were fucking dead!”

“Come on, you—you think I’d make it that easy for you?” Goku chuckled weakly, his laughter edged with a sharp wheeze. “Man, I hope you weren’t about to give me mouth-to-mouth.”

“Kakarot, I swear to the gods if you don’t shut up immediately I will drown you in that disgusting pit myself.”

Goku coughed out another weak laugh as he rubbed at his eyes, the rainwater slowly rinsing the grime from his skin. “Wow, this stuff kinda stings,” he rasped, and lifted himself until he was propped up on his elbows. A few more coughs escaped his lungs. “Stinks, too. If I had to guess, I’d say I found that algae bloom you promised, eh?”

“I don’t think that’s algae, Kakarot,” Vegeta grunted, pulling himself to his feet. He looked down at the dark, tarry pool they had just escaped before turning to look back at the strange, white debris scattered in the distance. He hated the sight of all of it.

“What do you think it is, then?”

Vegeta shook his head, letting out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t _know_. I don’t know what any of this is.” Vegeta tore his gaze away from the wreckage, and looked down at Goku. “And I don’t particularly care to find out—we’re leaving. _Now_.”

“Okay, just...give me a minute, here,” Goku said, and groaned as he, too, slowly began to pull himself to his feet. He paused to look out at the metal objects the same way Vegeta had. “I don’t even know how we ended up here again. All I remember is you hitting me, and I crashed into the ground, and—I...I don’t know, I think I must have rolled into that slime-pit and—blacked out?”

Vegeta clenched his jaw. If he had only been paying attention, they wouldn’t have ended up here at all.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re not coming back. First thing tomorrow I’m packing up our camp and we’re leaving this entire miserable sector.”

Goku leaned on Vegeta for support as he pulled himself up from the ground. Vegeta stiffened and glared at him, but said nothing.

“Can you use Instant Transmission?” was all he managed to ground out.

Goku coughed before offering a weak nod, and lifted his fingers to his forehead.

 

* * *

 

By the time they reached the campsite, the rain had finally stopped. A faint sunset had begun to stain the overcast sky a deep scarlet, but Goku and Vegeta failed to appreciate it—in mere seconds of arriving they were already squabbling over using the Hab’s portable shower, desperate to clean off the foul residue that still clung to them. Vegeta eventually conceded to Goku, begrudgingly letting him use it first—after all, he was covered in far more filth than Vegeta was, having been completely submerged in the black ooze rather than merely splashed by it.

Once he had his turn to wash up, Vegeta changed into a clean battle suit, relishing the feeling of pulling fresh, untainted gloves onto his hands. A faint, sulfuric smell still lingered on his skin, but he did his best to ignore it as he rifled through their supplies for fuel and set about lighting their fire-pit.

After he was finished, Vegeta took a brief moment to hold his hands to the fire, feeling the warmth of the flames through the thick material of his gloves. Though the rain had stopped and the wind had died down to little more than the occasional breeze, the nighttime chill was quickly setting in, and he felt that it was going to be colder than the night before. He soon turned away from the fire and kicked open their food cooler, wanting to get the night’s pitiable meal over with before it became dark.

“Kakarot, what do you want to eat?” Vegeta called over his shoulder as he began to sift through the pre-packed meals. “Your options are chicken, or… some kind of tuna, I think.”

Vegeta grabbed a couple of the dubious-looking chicken packages for himself as Goku emerged from the Hab’s entry-seal. He was dressed in a clean gi, a thermal blanket wrapped once again around his shoulders. Vegeta thought it might just be a trick of the dim light, but he thought that Goku looked unusually pale.

“I… I’m not really hungry, to be honest,” Goku said, covering his mouth as he launched into a sudden hacking fit. “I think I’d just like some water,” he choked in between coughs.

Vegeta raised an eyebrow—the thought of Goku willingly turning down any kind of food bordered on unimaginable—but he said nothing. He dug around in the cooler for a bottle of water and passed it over to Goku.

“You should take a senzu bean,” Vegeta said, watching as Goku quickly unscrewed the bottle and began to chug it down. “You inhaled a large amount of that sludge, whatever it was—who knows what kind of corrosive effect it could have had on your lungs.”

“Yeah, ah—I forgot the beans on the ship,” Goku admitted.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Kakarot,” Vegeta said, huffing before turning away to face the campfire, “I left you responsible for packing one thing—”

“It’s fine,” Goku said, waving a hand as he took another deep pull from the water bottle and coughed again. “I’ll manage.”

Vegeta shook his head dismissively as he threw his meal packets on the campfire rack, as if heating them up would make them any more palatable. He sat down near the firepit to watch the flames, and tried to ignore Goku’s persistent coughing as Goku fumbled to sit down on the opposite side of the fire.

Vegeta prodded at his food, impatient for it to cook despite a dwindling appetite to eat it. A deep exhaustion had settled into his bones, and a churning nausea had begun to bubble up from the pit of his stomach. His spar with Goku hadn’t even been particularly draining, and yet he felt like he had been grinding in the gravity room for days straight. He realized that even more than food, all he wanted was sleep. The intense fatigue irritated him, but then, it had been a long day, hadn’t it?

Despite the insulating material of his battlesuit, faint shivers coursed through his body.

Vegeta crossed his arms over his chest for warmth. Meanwhile, Goku’s coughing fit began to die down, and Vegeta watched as Goku tightened the blanket around his shoulders.

“When Gohan was little, Chi-Chi used to give him this awful tea anytime he was sick with a cough,” Goku said, grinning faintly as he stared into the fire. “The smell was absolutely terrible, and it tasted even worse. Sometimes I’d even sneak a couple spoonfuls of honey into it so it wouldn’t be so bad for him. But as awful as it tasted, it always worked like a charm—nothing else ever seemed to get him to sleep through the night.” Goku paused, coughing out a chuckle at the memory. “I sure wish I had some of that now.”

“Unfortunately I don’t think I packed the medkit with any old wives’ remedies,” Vegeta said dryly.

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to settle for the second-best medicine,” Goku said. “Sleep. I think I’m gonna hit the hay, if you don’t mind?”

For a moment, Vegeta strongly considered abandoning his meal, putting out the fire, and doing the same. Instead, he merely shrugged.

“Knock yourself out, Kakarot.”

Vegeta inched closer to the campfire for warmth as Goku stood up and slumped quietly back into the Hab. Vegeta listened for a few moments as Goku rustled about in the tent.

He tried to push away the gnawing unease in his chest as Goku lapsed into another coughing spell.

 

* * *

 

Vegeta barely made it through half his meal before he abandoned it altogether.

His appetite had left him completely, and it had been replaced by increasingly powerful waves of nausea. He chose to blame it on the bland, ashy taste of the food in his mouth, but he hadn’t felt like this the night before. Or this profoundly tired. His constant shivering wasn’t helping matters; even though night had fallen and the temperature had certainly dropped a few degrees, the campfire and his suit should have been more than enough to keep him comfortable. Huffing in frustration, Vegeta kicked dirt onto the fire until it snuffed out completely—maybe the more evenly heated environment of the Hab would serve him better.

He tossed out his uneaten meal and grabbed a water bottle for himself before moving toward the entrance of the Hab. He reached out to unfasten the seal, but paused when he heard a sudden rustling from within—it was then that Goku suddenly came stumbling out, and fell before Vegeta on his hands and knees.

“Kakarot, what the hell are you—”

But Vegeta’s words withered in his throat as Goku began to vomit profusely onto the ground.

It was a foul mixture of bile and oily, black fluid, and once Goku’s stomach had emptied completely, he continued to convulse at Vegeta’s feet with long, painful dry-heaves.

“Vegeta,” he gasped as he began to slump forward, as if he barely had the strength to keep his head up. A thin strand of saliva hung from his lips, and tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes as he continued to gag uselessly. “Vegeta, I—I don’t feel right…”

Vegeta swallowed hard, suppressing his own urge to be sick as he knelt down next to Goku. The nausea that twisted his insides only intensified, but he grit his teeth against it. Slowly, he pulled off a single glove and held his bare hand against Goku’s forehead. His eyes widened in alarm.

“Kakarot, you’re burning up.”

Feebly, Goku lifted his head long enough to look at Vegeta. “I… I think I’ve caught something.”

“What the hell could you have possibly caught?” Vegeta hissed, but all he could think about was the black pool. What exactly had they gone and exposed themselves to? Whatever substance it was, they had both been soaked with it, and Goku had ingested it—but it couldn’t be that, could it? That had only been hours ago; even if they had been exposed to some sort of pathogen, what could possibly incubate that quickly? Maybe a poison then, some kind of toxin—

Vegeta’s mind raced with the possibilities. Shivers continued to wrack his body, and it slowly began to dawn on him that they had nothing to do with the cold.

“We need to get off this planet,” he said firmly. “Now. We’re going to go back to the ship—and get the bloody senzu beans you left behind.”

Goku vomited again, bringing up little more than a foamy puddle of bile and spit. He reached out for Vegeta, holding his arm for support as he continued to dry-heave for several moments..

“Those don’t work for diseases,” Goku finally mumbled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Won’t do any good.”

“We have no idea if we’re dealing with a disease,” Vegeta snapped, but failed to offer any alternative theory. Goku opened his mouth as if to argue, but Vegeta pulled away from his side before he could say a word, and disappeared into the Hab. Once inside, he quickly tore through his supplies, digging out the metal Capsule kit and and the makeshift box he had packed as a medkit.

As he exited the Hab, he pulled a sealed patch from the medkit and threw it in Goku’s direction.

“Put that on,” he ordered. “I’m going to prep the landing pod for ascent.”

“What is it?” Goku asked.

“Antiemetic patch,” Vegeta said over his shoulder as he opened the metal kit and activated the first Capsule, causing the Hab to vanish inside of it. “Travelling up to the ship with you puking every minute is something I’d rather avoid.”

“Yeah… me too,” Goku grunted, and begrudgingly unsealed the patch before pasting it to his arm.

Vegeta activated another Capsule, and their landing pod materialized before him. He braced himself against it before opening it, closing his eyes as another wave of shudders passed through him.

He could only hope they would both last the journey back to the ship.

 

* * *

 

 

The trip back to the ship lasted only ten minutes, but to Vegeta it stretched on forever.

Goku was hardly conscious during the ascent, and spent the trip slumped in his seat, mumbling incoherently as they accelerated away from the planet. Vegeta had resorted to applying a med patch to himself, no longer able to ignore the suffocating nausea that threatened to overtake him. While he avoided vomiting, everything still spun in a shifting blur around him, and it was a struggle to pilot the pod as it rocketed into orbit. By then he was no longer shivering from cold, but instead was sweating profusely through the material of his suit. He felt compelled to check the pod’s heat exchange system, certain there had to be a malfunction—but of course everything was working normally. Bulma’s handiwork was nothing short of impeccable. He wished desperately that he had brought a water canteen with him.

He could only pray that the trajectory he had punched in would take them safely to the ship—at this point, he couldn’t assume he’d be able to maintain useful consciousness long enough to get them there. Goku’s rapid deterioration wasn’t exactly filling him with confidence. If the infection took Vegeta as quickly as it had Goku, they’d be relying solely on autopilot soon enough.

Infection. That was the word he’d settled on without realizing it. But what else could it be?

It wasn’t as if he had never been exposed to alien pathogens before. He could still remember the time an aggressive respiratory virus had torn through Yavrux station, incapacitating nearly every PTO soldier stationed there, including Vegeta. He’d spent nearly a week sealed in a healing tank, bathed in a sickening cocktail of antivirals to fight it off. Or the time a hemorrhagic plague had gone pandemic on PF-436, one of Frieza’s largest research bases, and Vegeta had been tasked with vaporizing the entire planet from orbit after the quarantine had failed. Frieza had been exceptionally incensed about that particular loss—Vegeta still bore the scars to prove it. Hell, not every instance had even been that dramatic: Vegeta still considered his first brush with the Earth virus the humans called “the flu” as one of his most annoying experiences with a hostile alien microorganism.

But those instances had all felt typical, just part of the mundane day-to-day reality of living between the stars. This felt different. He couldn’t shake the image of the strange, white debris they had found on the planet’s surface, scrawled with those inscrutable symbols. He was sure now more than ever that his first, gut reaction to them had been right—they had been left as a warning.

The pod finally breached the planet’s atmosphere, and the flight evened off into a smooth, weightless parabola. Soon, Vegeta could see the Capsule ship looming ahead through the pod’s view-port, and he tried wipe away the sheen of sweat beading along his brow. He felt like he was looking at the ship from underwater, his vision swimming so badly that the stars looked like blurred streaks arcing around the ship. It was only by some miracle that he was still fully conscious when they finally docked with it.

“Get up, Kakarot,” Vegeta grunted, undoing Goku’s seat harness as the pod’s door finally hissed open into the airlock.

Goku made a wordless noise before slumping over his in seat, and Vegeta rushed to catch him before he fell to the floor.

Vegeta forced himself to take a deep breath. “Damn it, Kakarot.”

He grabbed one of Goku’s arms and slung it over his neck, pulling Goku’s deadweight at his side. He barely had the balance to keep himself upright, much less Goku, but if he had made it this far, then god damn it he was going to get them both to the fucking medbay if it killed him.

“Cap4, open inner airlock door,” Vegeta barked. The ship computer beeped in agreement, and the airlock hatch slid open into the ship’s main corridor.

The air in the corridor felt cooler than the landing pod’s stuffy cabin, but Vegeta still felt like every cell in his body was about to reach its boiling point. He ignored the sweat running into his eyes as he focused on nothing else but dragging Goku toward the medbay. Goku’s steps were unsteady, his legs shaking beneath him as he leaned against for Vegeta for support. Vegeta tried not to give in to how badly his own knees shook, knowing one misstep would send them both keeling over into the bulkhead.

“Not much further,” Vegeta gasped, more to himself than to Goku.

“I wanna lie down,” Goku groaned, seeming to rouse back into consciousness before launching into another coughing fit.

“Yeah, well, me too,” Vegeta snapped. “And if you dare puke on me before we get to the medbay, I will take you back to the airlock and space you myself.”

Goku grumbled something incomprehensible, but Vegeta was too busy hauling him around a bend in the corridor to pay him any attention. Finally, they came to the door of the medbay, and Vegeta slammed at the keypad to its side, forcing it to slide open.

The medbay was easily the most barren area of the ship, stocked with only a few Capsule Corp machines and a minimum of supplies. Bulma had admitted as much to Vegeta when she had allowed him to tour the ship for the first time—when it came to Saiyan passengers, she had explained sarcastically, training facilities and food storage were much higher priorities. There was little more than an examination table, a few basic medical bots, a medconsole, and rows of white storage lockers. As much as he hated using them when he had worked under Frieza, Vegeta would have traded it all for a single healing tank.

Vegeta dumped Goku onto the examination table before turning to the medconsole, collapsing into the seat before it. Black spots crowded in from the corner of his vision like static, and he shook his head to dispel them. He tapped rapidly at the console’s touchscreen, struggling to maintain focus as the room spun around him.

Vegeta let out a breath when the console’s dispenser irised open and spat out a miniscule Capsule, and he activated it to reveal a single vial of red tablets. He immediately opened the vial and shook out three tablets into his palm before dry-swallowing them. After taking a moment to try and collect his bearings, he shook out another dose of the medication into his palm and stood up.

“Take these,” he ordered, holding out the medication to Goku. “For the fever.”

Goku struggled to lift his arm, taking the tablets from Vegeta. “Can I have some water?”

Vegeta sighed before turning toward the sink, grabbing a metal cup from one of the storage cupboards to fill from the faucet. Goku began coughing behind him.

“Where are the senzu beans?” Vegeta asked, turning back to hand the water to Goku.

Goku accepted the cup, throwing the tablets into his his mouth before washing them back with the water. “In my room,” he rasped. “There should be a bag of them in the storage compartment under my bunk.”

“Rest here,” Vegeta said. “I’m going to go get them.”

Goku tried to protest in between coughs. “I told you already, it won’t do anything—”

“Well it won’t hurt anything, either,” Vegeta said impatiently. “Your lungs don’t sound good, Kakarot—the senzu beans might help.”

Goku let himself fall back against the table, and groaned. Vegeta didn’t give him a chance to argue before leaving the medbay.

 

* * *

 

Despite the untidy state of Goku’s quarters, it didn’t take Vegeta long to find the senzu beans.

After making his way across the floor—strewn with rumpled clothing, as if Goku had dumped his entire wardrobe on the floor while packing for their trip planetside—Vegeta allowed himself a moment to sit on Goku’s bunk to catch his breath. The bed was unmade, blankets half on the mattress, half on the floor. Near the pillow, a few photos of Gohan and Goten had been taped to the bulkhead. It made Vegeta’s own quarters look absolutely sterile in comparison.

Vegeta waited for the room to stop spinning again before he reached below the bunk, pulling open the storage drawers. The first drawer he opened had nothing but a few pairs of weighted boots; the second contained the small, cloth bag he was looking for.

The bag held a small handful of the beans, and Vegeta wasted no time in plucking one out for himself. He swallowed it quickly, and held his breath as he waited for it to take effect.

Nothing happened.

The aches in his muscles and the bruises on his skin vanished, but the fever and nausea remained. Vegeta let out an exasperated breath as he leaned back against the bulkhead, closing his eyes against the fluorescent lighting. A dim throb ached between his temples.

Well, so much for that idea.

As much as he wanted to sink back into Goku’s bunk and sleep into the next year, Vegeta forced himself back to his feet. The senzu bean had done nothing for him, but maybe there was still a chance it could offer Goku some benefit. He clenched his fist around the bag, and left Goku’s quarters behind.

Vegeta dragged himself back through the ship’s main corridor, stopping several times to lean against the bulkhead and regain his balance. The throbbing in his skull only strengthened with each step. By the time he made his way back into the medbay, he felt ready to collapse to the floor.

Instead, he walked in to find Goku violently convulsing on the exam table.

Vegeta nearly dropped the bag of senzu beans as his entire body went rigid.

“Fuck,” he hissed through his teeth, bracing himself against the medbay door as his brain struggled to catch up with the situation. “Fuck!”

He rushed toward the table as soon as his body overcame his initial shock. He impulsively grabbed Goku’s arms as if meaning to still him, but Goku’s body only continued to thrash and writhe in Vegeta’s grip. Vegeta’s mind raced as he tried to make sense of the situation—how long had Goku been seizing? Vegeta had only been gone a few minutes, five, ten minutes maximum—how had Goku’s condition worsened so suddenly?

Vegeta released Goku, and stumbled back in panic, swearing profusely as he whirled towards the medconsole. He tapped a frantic query against the touchscreen, searching desperately for any kind of protocol for this.

“Fucking help me, you heap of garbage!” Vegeta snarled at the computer, as it processed his request with an excruciating slowness.

After what felt like an eternity, the medconsole spat out another Capsule. Vegeta activated it immediately, and an autoinjector appeared in his hands.

“ _Please promptly administer the contents of the autoinjector device_ ,” the console chirped. “ _Hold device firmly against skin and apply constant pressure for ten seconds to deliver_ —”

“Shut up, shut up!” Vegeta yelled, and the computer obeyed his voice command without complaint, the touchscreen powering down to blackness.

But Vegeta was already standing over Goku, rolling Goku’s convulsing form onto his side. He yanked the sleeve of Goku’s gi above his shoulder, and while trying to steady Goku’s clenching, shaking arm as best as possible, Vegeta slammed the injector into Goku’s muscle.

Vegeta gasped and fell back against the storage cupboards behind him as Goku’s body finally stilled. The injector fell from Vegeta’s grip, clattering to the floor, and he clenched at his temples with shaking hands, pulling trembling fingers through his hair.

Goku’s breath was ragged, his skin pale and bloodless and shining with sweat under the medbay’s harsh lights. Slowly, his eyes regained focus, and his confused gaze landed on Vegeta.

“Vegeta?” he croaked. “What… what’s going on—”

“It’s fine,” Vegeta said, his voice barely more than a rasping whisper. His knees finally buckled beneath him and he began to slide down towards the floor.

_It’s not fine. This is not fine._

“You just...you had a—,” Vegeta stumbled on his words, struggling to explain to Goku when he couldn’t even make sense of any of this himself. “It’s fine, Kakarot. Please just rest.”

Goku’s eyelids fluttered weakly as the sedative Vegeta had injected him with began to take hold of him. Vegeta half-wished he had saved some for himself.

After a long silence, Vegeta let out a shuddering breath.

“If it’s no difference to you, Kakarot,” Vegeta said, though he muttered it more to himself than to Goku. “I think it’s time we went back to Earth.”

But Goku had already slipped back into unconsciousness.


	5. Cytokine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to give a shout-out to everyone who's stuck with this so far! And thank you so much for all the kind comments, I really appreciate your encouragement. <3

* * *

 

_It was only after Vegeta’s pod slammed into the surface of Voduria's moon that he realized he had even been hit. He was barely lucky enough to survive the initial impact—his pod had cracked open like an egg in the crash, and his battered body had been flung across a valley of solid rock. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but the pain that awoke him was excruciating; every breath he drew was punctured by the sharp stabbing of cracked ribs; every attempt to crawl forward on his belly was accompanied by the searing pain of what he could only assume was a broken leg or dislocated hip—and even those injuries paled in comparison to the exquisite agony radiating from his fractured tail._

_Lifting a single hand to tap at his scouter was a herculean task, but he forced himself to activate it, trying desperately to hail Raditz or Nappa. Neither responded. Vegeta couldn’t be sure they had even made it off the surface of Voduria._  

_It was supposed to be a routine purge. Frieza had decided the planet would make a strategically useful base of operations for the sector, and all the intel had indicated the Vodurians were a weak, passive species. Apparently no one had anticipated that despite their frail biology and seemingly lax defense systems, they were also powerful psionics. Half of Vegeta’s unit had been massacred immediately, dropping dead in explosive sprays of skull fragments and brain matter. Saiyans were slightly more resistant to such attacks, and Vegeta had managed to escape with only a debilitating migraine and a profuse nosebleed._

_At least, that was until some Vodurian bastard had shot his pod down._

_After spending several more minutes trying to hail his comrades, Vegeta finally gave up, letting his hand fall back to the ground. He forced himself to at least open his eyes wide enough to assess his surroundings, but regretted the decision immediately—the sharp pain of his migraine felt like a hot knife cutting him down to the brainstem, and the blutz waves radiating off the moon weren’t helping. Where he lay with his shattered body pressed to the moon’s surface, the rays could not penetrate him well enough to trigger a full transformation, but he felt the initial pain of it all the same: the throbbing ache that started in his canines and pulsed down his spine, all the way to the tip of his twitching, broken tail, a pain that ebbed and flowed through his body like seismic waves._

_Vegeta took a deep, shaking breath and brought the pain into focus, channelling it into a much more familiar path: rage. Vegeta forced himself to his hands and knees, and looked up to the moon’s darkened sky. Voduria dominated most of the night sky, outshining all but the brightest stars, and Vegeta couldn’t help but indulge himself in a vision of the miserable planet vaporizing into a vast cloud of hot plasma. Frieza’s plans be damned—he would destroy the hideous world himself._

_But Vegeta’s hateful vision was quickly ruined by the appearance of something hovering over the horizon—a small ship, Vegeta realized, and it was heading in his direction._

_It was a Vodurian skimmer—a small combat vessel that could hold three, maybe four soldiers. It was probably the one that had taken Vegeta’s pod down, and and if its rapid approach were any indication, it was here to finish the job._

_Not that Vegeta had any intention of letting that happen._

_The ship hovered to a landing less than a hundred meters away. Vegeta pulled himself into a crouching position to face the invaders, ignoring the pain that lanced down his spine and  into his leg, his tail hanging limply behind him. He considered lifting his arm and aiming a ki-blast in their direction—he could annihilate them before they even had the chance to disembark. But Vegeta resisted the urge. He wanted to see the faces of the arrogant fools who thought they  could finish him so easily. More than that, he wanted to make sure that he was the last, horrific thing they saw before he destroyed them._

_A group of three Vodurians exited the ship. Even from this distance, Vegeta could make out their frail forms, the sickly, translucent sheen of their skin, and the hideous, blinking cluster of black eyes that stretched across their face in a ridge. Every aspect of their reptilian forms repulsed Vegeta on a purely animal level, his hate for them almost reflexive._

_As they approached, Vegeta could feel them pressing into his mind. It felt like claws sinking into his brain, and the migraine ringing between his temples suddenly felt like a star collapsing inside his skull, the pain expanding with such explosive force that it threatened to burn every synapse to ash. Fresh blood gushed from one nostril._

_Vegeta steadied himself, further channeling the pain into his steadily mounting rage, and his mouth twisted into a snarl._

_Vegeta looked away from his approaching enemies, and cast his gaze to the ground. Despite the pain threatening to split his skull apart, he opened his eyes as wide as his eyelids would allow. The light radiating off the moon’s pale surface was painfully bright, and Vegeta drew it into himself, his vision blurring and sparking as blutz waves seared the back of his retinas. He felt the first waves of transformation begin to overtake him once again—his body shook and trembled as something like an electric current passed through him, his broken tail bristling, his canines aching as they extended from his gums. His body felt like it was it was being torn up from the inside, muscle and flesh rending from bone, twisting and reshaping and bursting into something behemoth._

_Vegeta’s form soon towered above the Vodurians, and in the last moments before his vision clouded with red, Vegeta could read the fear on the faces of the psionic cowards that trembled below him. His growing fangs gnashed with the impulse to crush them with his teeth, saliva dripping from his jaws at the thought of what their blood might taste like on his tongue. He wanted to devour them all._

_The transformation completed with a thunderous roar that shook the landscape. Where Vegeta had stood just moments before, a hulking monster had taken his place._

_It wanted to devour entire worlds._

 

* * *

 

Vegeta jerked awake to find himself shivering violently, his sheet drenched in sweat and clinging to his clammy skin. His head simultaneously felt slow and sluggish with fever, and also like it was about to crack open from the pain of his headache, each pulse of agony ringing like a sharp bell sounding through thick fog. While only half-conscious, he tossed the damp sheet off his aching body and crawled out of bed, setting the pain aside for now as he stumbled to the ship’s head. Once there, he promptly fell to his knees before the toilet and vomited.

He was overdue for his next dose of meds, then.

He dry-heaved for a long while before finally wiping his mouth with the back of a shaking hand. Even slumped on the floor, his joints felt raw and inflamed, his entire body aching as it fought the infection coursing through his veins. It took an unreasonable amount of strength to pull himself up to the sink, where he quickly turned on the cold water full-force and splashed a few handfuls of it onto his face.

The water felt good against his skin, but the sharp coldness of it wasn’t enough to dissipate the heaviest dregs of fog clouding his mind. His fever dreams still lingered, seeping into the dark spaces between his waking thoughts, and he was bothered by the images that flashed before his mind’s eye.

He had seen Mount Paozu. In his dream, it had been bright and verdant, its river high and swollen with spring snowmelt, and the grass and trees a shade of green so rich it bordered on unnatural. Vegeta had seen the scenery from above, as he raced through the sky—not powered by any sort of ki, but while nestled atop a warm, yellow cloud.

The imagery should have given him some measure of peace, some peace of mind in an otherwise horrific night—and to some extent, it had. But the dream had been so crisp, so clear, that it seemed almost more real than the darkened room around him.

It troubled him.

Vegeta tried to put it out of his mind as he made his way out of the head and back to his cabin. He slumped back into his bunk, welcoming the oppressive darkness around him—he had ordered the ship’s computer to deactivate all lights in a vain attempt to soothe the headache throbbing behind his eyes. It was little help. Before lying down again, he reached out to his side-table, feeling out the crumpled antiemetic patches and half-empty vials of antipyretics and anti-inflammatories he’d pilfered from the medbay. He hastily rubbed on a fresh patch onto his arm before washing down a handful of the tablets with some sort of electrolyte fluid. It was the best he could do at the moment for his symptoms, at least according to the medconsole's instructions. He was no healer by any means, and with no other options, he was forced to rely on whatever primitive Earthling medicine was available to him, effective or not.

So far it seemed to be doing, as far as Vegeta could tell, fuck all.

 He finally collapsed to his side, letting his head sink into his pillow as his body spasmed with fresh shivers. It was several long minutes before the splitting ache in his skull ebbed to a dull roar, and several minutes more before he slipped into the first, twitching moments of another fitful REM cycle.

It was then that the cabin’s comscreen suddenly sounded in alarm, a barrage of obnoxious sound and light that woke Vegeta with a violent jolt. He uttered a furious groan at the disturbance, and restrained himself before he could ki-blast the comscreen into a heap of sparking slag.

 “ _Vegeta, there has been an interruption in Kakarot’s vitals,”_ the shipboard AI notified him in its artificially soothing voice. “ _Subject may be experiencing biosensor malfunction or complete cardiac arrest—”_

 “Where is he?” Vegeta snarled. Before he had come to his cabin to rest, Vegeta had fitted Goku with a biosensor strap around his wrist and had ordered Cap4 to notify him the moment there was any change—any dip in blood pressure, any EKG abnormality, any sudden brainwave pattern suggestive of another seizure—Vegeta needed to know. As sick as he was himself, Vegeta couldn’t shake the feeling that Goku’s condition was worse.

“ _K_ _akarot’s monitor is currently broadcasting from the medbay.”_

“Then he took the fucking monitor off,” Vegeta growled, dragging a hand down his face. Now he was going to have to track the idiot down himself. Vegeta wondered bitterly who was going to kill Goku first—the infection, or himself.

Vegeta threw his covers off himself and nearly fell out of his bunk in his rush to leave. The pain in his head only intensified as he slammed open his cabin’s hatch, uttering a furious string of Saiyan and Earthling curses as he did.

The ship’s corridor was dark, illuminated with nothing else but a strip of emergency lights along the floor. He nearly recoiled in shock when he saw Goku’s form moving towards him.

“Kakarot!” he yelled, bracing himself against the bulkhead and holding a hand up to his throbbing temple as he called down the hallway. “What the hell are you doing? You should be in the medbay! And where the hell is the biosensor monitor I gave you?”

Goku didn’t say anything, and continued to move wordlessly down the corridor. Even in the darkness, Vegeta could see something unnatural in the way Goku walked towards him. His gait was straight, steady, almost mechanical with each carefully measured step—nothing like Vegeta’s own fevered stumbling through the ship. It was impossible to tell from Goku’s movements that only hours before, he had been half-carried to the medbay, too weak and delirious to walk on his own.

“Kakarot?” Vegeta said again, his voice lilting higher with unease.

Goku stopped a few feet short of Vegeta’s cabin. Something strange played across the normally soft features of Goku’s face, his mouth pulling into a crooked smirk.

“Vegeta.”

The word sounded like a threat on his tongue, completely void of the usual lightness of Goku’s voice. Every syllable was sharp, curt, almost taunting. Vegeta narrowed his eyes, searching Goku’s face in the darkness for some hint of familiarity.

Nothing but darkness stared back.

“I had a dream, Vegeta,” he said, his voice dropping lower as he took another few steps toward Vegeta. Hardly a foot remained between them now.

Vegeta clutched at the cabin’s hatchway, trying to brace himself as his legs shook beneath him.

“What are you talking about?” Vegeta croaked.

“I saw you,” Goku explained, his voice little more than a dark, rapturous whisper above the ambient hum of the ship. “Rather… I saw _through_ you. I saw you transform on a desolate moon, I _felt_ it as the Oozaru form overtook you. I watched cowards perish at your feet, a whole planet swallowed up by its core—turned to nothing but fiery dust under your power alone.”

Vegeta’s fingers dug so hard into the hatchway’s frame that the metal threatened to warp beneath his grip “You’re overdue for your next dose of meds,” Vegeta said, shaking his head. “You’ve clearly gone delirious with fever—”

“Voduria,” Goku said with a simple, cold clarity. “The world’s name was Voduria.”

The fever that consumed Vegeta seemed to break as a sudden burst of ice coursed through his veins. Clearly he had misheard Goku—there was no way Goku could know that name; Vegeta had destroyed that planet eons ago, so long ago that the memory of it was barely still intact in his own mind.

Vegeta stumbled backward into his cabin as Goku came closer still.

“You… you said you saw this in a dream?” Vegeta said, his voice escaping him in a hoarse rush. The strange, painfully crisp images of Mount Paozu rushed to the forefront of his brain as his overtaxed mind scrambled to make sense of what was happening. He knew with sudden clarity that those images hadn’t come from within his own subconscious. Something inexplicable had fed that dream—that memory—into him as he slept.

“Yes, a dream,” Goku breathed, following Vegeta into his cabin. Vegeta pressed himself against the bulkhead as Goku cornered him in the claustrophobic space. Vegeta felt his legs nearly buckling beneath him as Goku leaned against the bulkhead with one arm, boxing him in. With his other arm, he lifted a hand to brush Vegeta’s cheek. “It was exquisite. You were breathtaking, Vegeta.”

Vegeta’s entire body stiffened at the touch, his throat closing up as he mouthed a wordless protest.  He forced himself to meet Goku’s gaze, but he didn’t feel like he was looking at Goku at all—it was like looking upon the face of something alien merely wearing Kakarot’s skin.

“You’re not yourself,” Vegeta choked out, turning away from Goku’s palm on his face. This had to be a some symptom of the illness, a sign that the fever had spread to the brain, or some lingering effects of the seizure. “You’re not well, Kakarot.”

“Oh, but you’re mistaken, Vegeta.” A joyless smile twisted Goku’s face as his hand rose to Vegeta’s face once again, slipping to the back of Vegeta’s head this time where it curled painfully into his hair. “I feel better than I have in a long, long time.”

Vegeta snarled, finally mustering the strength to slap Goku’s hand away. The sound of it was loud enough to ring throughout the cabin, spurring a fresh wave of pain as Vegeta’s migraine recoiled at the noise. Goku, too, seemed affected—suddenly his eyes went wide, his face softening into something recognizable.

“Vegeta?” he asked, his voice taking on a note of panic. “Vegeta, I—”

He stumbled backward from Vegeta, spinning around like he was only just realizing where he was.

“I’m so sorry, Vegeta, I don’t—” he swallowed and shook his head. “I don’t know why I came in here, I’d never come into your room without asking first, I just—”

“Shut up,” Vegeta hissed, rubbing two fingers against his throbbing temple. “You’re sick. You need meds.”

Vegeta brushed past Goku, who was suddenly trembling in the darkness. Vegeta grabbed what was left of the medication on his bedside table, and thrust a handful of tablets and the electrolye drink into Goku’s hands.

“Take these,” he ordered.

Goku looked down at the tablets in is hand, but made no immediate move to swallow them.

“Did you have dreams, too?” he asked, the words shaking as he forced them out. “It wasn’t even like a dream, it was like I was inside your head, Vegeta, I don’t understand—”

“That’s not important right now,” Vegeta barked, and he grabbed Goku by the biceps, shaking him in place. “You had a seizure, Kakarot. For all I know you could still be recovering from that. Or having a bad reaction to the sedative I gave you. Maybe the fever is just melting both our fucking brains. Please just take your meds so we can both get through the rest of this fucking night?”

Goku’s face crumpled under Vegeta’s anger. “R-right… okay…”

Goku swallowed the medication Vegeta had given him without complaint, and took a long drink from the bottle. Satisfied, Vegeta began to leave the room.

“Go lie down in your bunk,” he said over his shoulder as he stepped across the threshold. “I’ll be right back.”

Vegeta returned shortly to Goku’s cabin with Goku’s biosensor in his hand—he had found it discarded a few steps from the medbay. Goku sat hunched over on the edge of his bunk, and watched silently as Vegeta strapped the thin device around Goku’s wrist.

“I put this on you earlier so Cap4 could keep an eye on you,” Vegeta explained. Despite the pain in his skull setting his teeth on edge, he tried to maintain an even voice as he spoke to Goku. His angry outbursts weren’t going to help matters any. “I didn’t want your condition to worsen while I slept and didn’t know.”

“I’m feeling okay now," Goku said quietly, shrugging. “Just really tired, still. But better than I did a few hours ago.”

“Just keep it on the for the night,” Vegeta said. He tapped at the biosensor’s small screen, taking note of Goku’s vitals. Everything looked… normal. “Well, physically, you seem to be improving. Even your temperature is nearly back to normal.”

“Well that’s gotta be a good sign, right?” Goku said. He smiled up at Vegeta, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m sorry for taking this off earlier,” he went on, fidgeting with the monitor at his wrist. “I don’t even know why I did. I don’t know what happened to me when I woke up, Vegeta. It’s like someone else woke up inside me, started doing things and saying things I couldn’t control. Right after that dream I had. I’m… really freaked out, to be honest with you.”

“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Vegeta said, but was sure of no such thing at all. “I’m going to try and make contact with Bulma tomorrow. Perhaps she can bring us closer to a diagnosis of what the hell we’re dealing with here.”

Goku ran his hand through the dishevelled spikes of his hair. “Maybe…”

“I can’t think of anyone with a better head or resources to get to the bottom of this,” Vegeta assured him, and that much he did believe. “Get some rest for tonight, Kakarot.”

Vegeta turned to leave, but Goku reached out for his wrist before he could step away. Vegeta rose an eyebrow and Goku let go of him immediately, as if he had made the mistake of touching a flame.

“Um, maybe you should be wearing one of these too?” he said, looking away sheepishly as he pointed at his biosensor. “Seems just as likely something could happen to you, Vegeta. You… you don’t look great.”

Vegeta had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror back when he had been ill in the ship’s head, and Goku was understating it—Vegeta looked terrible. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, his skin drained of all colour and clammy with sweat. Occasional shivers still wracked his body as his fever refused to break.

“Just take note of my ki,” Vegeta said. “If you can sense it, I’m fine; if not, then I’m dead. Easy enough.”

Goku frowned. “That’s not funny, Vegeta.”

“I’ll be fine, Kakarot,” Vegeta sighed. “I just need sleep.”

Goku gave a small, reluctant nod. “All right. Goodnight, Vegeta.”

“Goodnight, Kakarot,” Vegeta answered before he could catch himself.

 

* * *

 

After twelve hours of deep, dreamless sleep, Vegeta woke to find his head still throbbing and his body still trembling and aching with fever. Dragging himself out of bed to come to the bridge had been an excruciating task, and trying to maintain any semblance of focus just about sapped what few energy stores he had left.

The haze of illness was still thick in his mind, so he was certain that he had misread the message blinking up at him from the main console. He took a moment to rub his bleary eyes, but when the stars had cleared from his vision, the message remained the same.

_Error initiating commlink. Unable to establish connection with Earth._

He must have made a mistake inputting his request, then. Not a surprise, given his current state.

He tapped at the touchscreen again, this time moving with a careful, deliberate slowness as he punched in the authentication code for the ship’s tachyonic transmitter. A rotating Capsule Corp. logo appeared on the screen, seeming to process his request, but then—

_Error initiating commlink. Unable to establish connection with Earth._

“Fuck.” The curse escaped Vegeta’s lips as soft, pained breath. “Cap4, run diagnostics on the communication systems.”

Vegeta hunched over the console, burying his head in his hands as the ship’s AI went to work in the background, scouring its circuits for the information Vegeta had demanded. Vegeta waited for several long minutes, with nothing but the pounding in his skull to keep him company.

“ _All internal systems are functioning_ ,” Cap4 finally announced, its synthetic, feminine voice immediately setting Vegeta on edge. “ _Failure determined to have occurred in the external communication array. Four energy cores were irreversibly damaged by a power surge while you were planetside_.”

Vegeta’s hands curled into fists in his hair. “A power surge?”

“ _Likely caused by a high energy particle burst_ ,” Cap4 elaborated, as if that meant anything to Vegeta. “ _Recent telemetry logs indicate several massive coronal ejections from this system’s star, which were the most likely source_.”

“A solar storm?” Vegeta asked through clenched teeth.

“ _In simple terms, yes_ ,” Cap4 confirmed, and Vegeta could swear he detected a hint of impatience in the AI’s response. It was obvious from its cadence alone that Bulma had been its programmer.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Vegeta muttered. “Can you fix this?”

“ _No. The damaged energy cores will need to be manually replaced. Spare cores can be found in the cargo bay. I will compile a set of repair instructions for you shortly_.”

 “Great. Thanks,” Vegeta spat, pinching the bridge of his nose as he leaned back in his seat.

 “Vegeta?”

 Vegeta cracked open an eyelid and saw Goku climbing the stairwell into the bridge. He held a metal container in his hand.

 “I, uh, brought you some coffee,” he said.

 “How long have you been up?” Vegeta asked.

 “Just a few minutes,” Goku said. He moved towards the bridge’s central console, and set the coffee down next to Vegeta. Vegeta allowed himself the momentary pleasure of taking in the rich smell of it, half-surprised Goku knew how to brew it at all. “I heard you up here and thought you might need it. How are you feeling?”

“Like hell,” Vegeta said. “How about you?”

 Goku shrugged before taking the empty seat next to Vegeta. “Better. Hungry, actually.”

 Vegeta lifted the metal cup to his lips, taking a long drink of the coffee. He winced when his stomach soured at the feeling of it.

 “Well, you’ll have to eat alone,” Vegeta said, setting the cup down away from him. “I don’t think I have the stomach for much of anything.”

 “You still don’t look so hot,” Goku agreed, and Vegeta shifted uncomfortably at the concern in his voice. “Did you get a hold of Bulma?”

 “No. The comm array is broken. I’m going to have to go out and fix it.”  Vegeta pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Even with the cabin’s lighting set to its absolute dimmest, every single blinking display in the bridge felt like a thousand needles to his forebrain. Even the soft background hum of the ship felt like an assault on the senses.

“Let me do it,” Goku said. “You’re not well. You should rest some more.”

Vegeta shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. No offense, Kakarot, but Bulma’s father has told the story of what happened when you had to repair your Capsule ship en route to Namek—if I remember correctly, you glued yourself to the hull and nearly crashed the ship into a red giant. Not exactly the kind of expert technical skill we’re going to need here.”

Goku reached back to rub the back of his neck, his face reddening. “True, but—”

“It’s fine, Kakarot,” Vegeta said as he stood to leave. “It’s not urgent. I’ll attend to it when I feel able.”

Vegeta began to climb the stairs to the deck below.

“I’ll be in my cabin,” he called to Goku as he left. “If I die in my bunk, you’re officially Captain. Don’t screw it up.”

“Really not funny, Vegeta,” Goku yelled after him, but Vegeta didn’t have the energy to answer.

 

* * *

 

Vegeta spent the rest of the morning—afternoon? It was hard to keep track in this state, in a starship, no less—slipping in and out of consciousness. He wavered between sweating and shivering, his fevers coming and going like tides that left him aching and exhausted. He turned in his bunk fitfully, any truly restful sleep just beyond his grasp, and at times it became difficult to tell his dreams apart from the darkness of his cabin around him.

 When a knock sounded at his hatchway, he wasn’t sure he had really heard anything at all.

 “Vegeta?” Goku’s voice sounded muffled on the other side of the hatch. “Can I come in?”

 Vegeta sat up, struggling to alertness as he pulled a handful of sheets over his bare form. “Y-yes, fine, come in.”

 The hatchway opened, and Goku stepped into the cabin holding a cup and a bowl of something that smelled rich and savory to Vegeta.

“I brought you some soup,” Goku said. He moved slowly towards the bed, as if he were approaching a skittish animal. “It’s almost suppertime. I thought you might be hungry.”

“Gods, have I been sleeping that long?” Vegeta rasped, rubbing at his eyes.

Goku nodded. “I guess your body needed the rest. Do you feel better?”

Vegeta felt exhausted, but noted with a sense of relief that his headache had finally dulled. “I’ve felt much worse.”

Without asking, Goku took a seat on the edge of the bunk. Vegeta was too tired to be offended by the disregard for his personal space.

“Here,” Goku said, passing the bowl to Vegeta. “Careful, it’s still hot.”

Vegeta wasn’t hungry, but the smell wafting up from the soup was pleasant enough. He knew he should try to eat something—his last meal had been whatever vacuum-packed tripe he had tried to eat planetside, and that had been vomited up hours ago. He poked his spoon at a few particular chicken chunks before lifting a mouthful to his lips. He felt his appetite begin to stir the moment the warm broth touched his tongue.

“You made this?” Vegeta asked after several greedy mouthfuls.

“Yeah.” Goku smiled. “It’s not a complicated recipe, really… It’s kind of like what my Grandpa Gohan used to make me any time I had a fever.”

Vegeta soon discarded the spoon, opting to lift the bowl directly to his lips. “I didn’t think you could even operate a microwave,” he said, smirking behind the lip of the bowl, “much less make something from scratch.”

Goku chuckled, taking back the empty bowl once Vegeta had his fill.

“I can get you some more,” he said, setting the bowl aside, and passing Vegeta the cup of water he had also carried in.

Vegeta shook his head, but accepted the offered cup. “Maybe in a moment.” He took a deep drink from the cup before looking back at Goku, who hadn’t moved from where he sat on the edge of Vegeta’s mattress. “What were you doing all day while I was passed out in here, anyway?”

“Spent some time on the gravity deck, mostly.”

Vegeta rose an eyebrow as he took another sip of water. “You’re feeling well enough to resume training?”

Goku looked away and began to run his fingers along the edge of Vegeta’s bunk, absently smoothing out the wrinkles in the sheets. “Well, it's not like I’m not at the the top of my game or anything, but there wasn’t much else to do without you around,” he murmured. Vegeta watched as Goku’s fingers traced invisible shapes into the mattress, as if he were trying to put his thoughts to symbols. After a few moments, Goku realized Vegeta was watching him and stopped, pulling his hands away to fold them in his lap.

“I went back to the medbay,” Goku said quietly.

Vegeta finished the rest of his drink and set the cup aside. “And?”

“I… I thought I’d try to retrace my steps,” Goku mumbled. “Figure out what happened there, why I started acting so…”

“Out of your goddamn mind?” Vegeta suggested.

The lighting was dimmed in Vegeta’s cabin, but the starlight from the porthole was enough to highlight the redness creeping across Goku’s face.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Have you felt like that at all today?” Vegeta asked.

“No. I feel okay, I just… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

Vegeta nodded. If he were being honest with himself, he had to admit that the entire episode had unsettled him, too.

“Perhaps we’re assigning too much meaning to the entire thing. Perhaps it was nothing,” Vegeta said. He wanted to believe that. He wanted to accept that last night had been nothing else but just another data point in the chaotic scatter plot of crises they’d endured since coming to this miserable star system. “We were sick. You were drugged. The shock of being exposed to… a memory like that… It’s no wonder your behaviour was less than rational.”

Goku winced. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you like that.”

Vegeta’s mind wandered to a distant but achingly clear memory of an Earthling wasteland, the last place he had ever taken the form of the Oozaru. The first place he had ever faced Goku. Few other memories had burned such a distinct scar into his mind.

“I had a dream last night, too,” Vegeta admitted suddenly.

Goku looked at him with wide eyes. “You did?”

“I saw Mount Paozu,” Vegeta continued. Part of him hesitated, unsure why he was even sharing this. “It was spring. I saw it from above—the mountain, the river, everything—while flying on that weird yellow cloud of yours.”

Goku gave a short laugh. “You were riding Nimbus?”

“No, _you_ were. I saw it through your eyes.”

“Huh. Wow,” Goku murmured, his eyebrows narrowing together “So, we were swapping memories?”

“It would seem so, yes.”

“Why do you think that is?” Goku said, turning to face Vegeta more directly, his expression open and eager. “Do you think our Fusion has something to do with it?”

Vegeta had already thought of at least a dozen half-formed theories to explain it, but all of it was little more than feverish speculation at this point.

“I don’t know, Kakarot,” he sighed, letting his eyes fall closed as he slumped back on his pillow. “I don’t know any better than you do.”

“Yeah… yeah, I know,” Goku said, scratching at the back of his head. “I’m sorry. I should stop rambling and let you get some rest. I think I’m gonna hit the gravity deck again for awhile if that’s alright with you?”

“Get a good warm-up for me,” Vegeta said, nodding. “I’ll be kicking your ass at five-hundred G again the minute I feel better.”

“Sure thing, Vegeta,” Goku laughed. “Just let me know if there’s anything you need.”

Goku was gone before Vegeta could say another word, and Vegeta settled back into his bunk. He tossed and turned for several long moments, exhausted, but resistant to falling back asleep. He assumed his fever was returning, or his meds were finally starting to take their toll on his frayed mind, because there was little else that could explain the baffling sentiment he suddenly felt.

He actually wished the fool had stayed to keep him company.

 

  



	6. Denaturation

_If Vegeta were capable of feeling anything for the soldier hunched over in the airlock, it would have fallen somewhere between pity and outright disgust. The soldier had clearly been tortured during Zarbon’s interrogation, if his injuries were any indication—one arm dangled at an unnatural angle from his shoulder, patches of his fur were burnt and crusted with blood, and one eyelid was swollen shut underneath a smashed scouter._

_As far as Vegeta could tell, he had gotten off lightly._

_“You see, Vegeta? This is what traitorous scum looks like,” Frieza said, passing Vegeta to take a closer look through the airlock’s inner window. “All the false intel we were fed about Voduria—all of it traced to this miserable little bottom-feeder right here. The Vodurians certainly picked a poor excuse for a mole.”_

_Frieza paused to take a long sip from his wine glass._

_“Now you, on the other hand,” Frieza continued, casting a sidelong sneer in Vegeta’s direction. “You’re no traitor, Vegeta. You have simply been a bad monkey. But fortunately for bad monkeys, a simple lesson in obedience will suffice.”_

_Vegeta maintained a flat expression as rage flared up within him. He crossed his arms across his chest, the bandages underneath his battlesuit chafing against his skin, freshly broken ribs aching as his tail tightened around his waist. Only hours before, Frieza had come into the medbay, shattered open Vegeta’s healing pod, and had done his best to tear apart Vegeta’s barely healed body while he was still too weak to fight back. Without a healing pod, it would be days before Vegeta’s wounds closed and his bruises faded, and the scars left behind would be permanent._

_“Now, Voduria might have been a waste of a planet,” Frieza went on, and Vegeta resisted the urge to snarl as Frieza moved closer him. “But I don’t remember anyone giving you orders you destroy it, Vegeta. And you know I simply can’t have stupid monkeys making important tactical decisions like that, without any oversight—what kind of empire would I be running if I left fools like yourself in command? Simply unacceptable.”_

_Frieza’s dark lips curled into a smirk as he took another drink of his wine, and Vegeta imagined himself taking the glass and smashing it across Frieza’s hideous, reptilian face. Vegeta took a moment to savor the mental image._

_“Voduria was a liability,” Vegeta said, masking his fury behind a cool, even tone. “Leaving the planet intact would have been a dangerous mistake.”_

_“That wasn’t your decision to make, my insolent little Prince,” Frieza hissed, so close that Vegeta could feel Frieza’s breath against his ear. Suddenly Frieza’s hand was wrapped around the back of Vegeta’s neck, his black nails sinking into Vegeta’s skin like talons. Vegeta stumbled forward as Frieza began to pull Vegeta towards the inner airlock door._

_“Now, you are going to follow my orders, like a good little monkey,” Frieza said, gesturing with his wine glass in the direction of the prisoner in the airlock. They couldn’t hear the prisoner from this side of the hatch, but to Vegeta it looked as if he were half-wheezing, half-sobbing, too weakened from his injuries to even hope of escape. “The airlock is prepped. All you have to do is press the button, and—goodbye, traitor scum!”_

_To be spit out into the cold vacuum of space, discarded like living trash—Vegeta could think of no death less honorable. Even the weakest prisoners were normally given the chance to defend themselves against their executioners, even if they stood no real chance in combat. Traitor or not, Vegeta felt his stomach writhe in nausea at the thought of killing someone in such a sterile, cowardly fashion._

_“I would be happy to destroy him, Lord Frieza,” Vegeta said. “But let me cut him down by my own hands.”_

_“Oh, what? Do you find this offensive to your delicate, Saiyan code of honor?” Frieza spat. “I don’t care. Push the release button now, Vegeta,  before I change my mind and throw you in there, too.”_

_Vegeta knew there was nothing empty about Frieza’s threat—and yet, he hesitated._

_Frieza’s nails sunk deeper into Vegeta’s neck, and Vegeta hissed as they broke through bruised kin._

_“Do it now, Vegeta, or you will pay dearly for your petulant insubordination.”_

_Vegeta clenched his jaw. He knew that if he followed Frieza’s order, everyone would soon find out what he had done—rumors would quickly spread through the ranks about how Vegeta had cowardly taken his vengeance by airlocking a weak, defenseless intelligence officer. Any command he held would be undermined for weeks._

_But joining the spy in the airlock wasn’t exactly a better alternative._

_Vegeta pulled away from Frieza’s grip and approached the bulkhead. He hesitated for another moment before finally flipping open the airlock’s manual control panel. His hand hovered briefly over the controls, and in the corner of his eye, he could see the prisoner weeping in the corner of the airlock._

_Vegeta pushed the release button._

_In an instant, the outer airlock door opened and the soldier was jettisoned from the pressurized compartment. The void swallowed him into its infinite maw, and his corpse spiraled away into the abyss until Vegeta couldn’t distinguish it from the stars beyond._

_Frieza laughed, the sound  like a serpent curling into Vegeta’s ear, and he downed the rest of his wine before moving toward Vegeta. Suddenly, Vegeta could feel Frieza’s nails at the back of his neck again, but this time they touched Vegeta’s skin with a sickening gentleness._

_“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it, my little Prince?” Frieza sneered, his fingers curling into Vegeta’s hair. “We’ll make an obedient monkey of you yet.”_

_Frieza laughed again. Vegeta said nothing, his gaze fixed on some dark spot  light-years away._

 

* * *

 

Vegeta snapped his helmet into place as the inner airlock door irised shut behind him. He double- and triple-checked the seals of his suit before skimming the data-feed in the corner of his helmet’s HUD—suit pressure was optimal; suit umbilical was secured; life support systems all appeared functional. He checked and rechecked everything again before finally giving the order to Cap4 to start depressurizing the airlock. His pre-EVA checklist was exhaustive, obsessive even, but he figured an overabundance of caution couldn’t hurt—it would be a bitter irony for him to survive a virulent alien infection only to suffocate to death.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta said through the ship’s primary radio channel. “I’m about to go out. The repair shouldn’t be too complicated and I don’t expect to be out here long, but I would appreciate if you could standby in case of emergency.”

Vegeta hadn’t seen Goku when he had woken up that morning. He had already left his cabin when Vegeta had crawled out of bed, and he hadn’t met Vegeta in the galley for breakfast. Vegeta had sensed Goku’s ki in the area of the gravity deck, and so Vegeta had assumed he was occupied with some solo training.  Vegeta wasn’t exactly expecting Goku to interrupt his morning workout to respond—so he was surprised when Goku answered him immediately.

“Sure thing, Vegeta.”

Vegeta frowned. Goku’s voice sounded strangely flat to him, almost like he was annoyed. Vegeta briefly considered asking if something was wrong, but decided against it—maybe Goku was just tired, or the sound wasn’t transmitting properly over the tinny radio channel. Nothing to waste time thinking about, he decided—especially when he just wanted to get this repair work over with as soon as possible.

Vegeta refocused, and moved to the end of the airlock. “Cap4, open outer airlock door.”

The ship accepted his request, and the door spiraled open. Vegeta picked up his case of replacement cores and tools, and gently pulled himself out of the airlock.

Vegeta immediately hated being out in the vacuum. He hated the feeling of his suit, stiff and inflexible under pressure, and how uncomfortably warm it felt even with the built-in heat exchange system. The feeling of zero G was worse—even with his suit umbilical tethering him to the ship and the magnetic strips on his boots anchoring him to the hull, he struggled to orient himself to any sense of up or down, his inner ear reeling at the sudden loss of equilibrium. By the time he approached the communication array, he was quickly regretting his decision to eat breakfast that morning.

The comm array was a small patch of the ship, easily identifiable by the wide receiving dish and antennae embedded into the hull. Cap4 laid out the schematics for him, allowing him to quickly find the node with the damaged cores. Wasting little time, Vegeta pulled himself down to the hull of the ship until he was on his hands and knees, and began to unseal the tiles covering the energy cores.

The repairs were easier than Vegeta had anticipated. The damaged cores were simple to remove, and inserting and calibrating the replacements was little challenge under Cap4’s instruction. It was so easy that even as he listened to Cap4’s voice, he felt his attention begin to drift, and he soon found himself dwelling on his previous night.

He had dreamt again. Through Goku’s eyes, he had witnessed a memory that didn’t belong to him—he had seen Bulma, much younger than Vegeta had ever known her, just barely an adolescent. It had been the first time they had met, as far as Vegeta could tell—Goku was puzzled by the mere existence of a human girl, and Bulma was shocked to discover a child impervious enough to withstand a car crash and several bullets. Somehow Vegeta was hardly surprised by the foolishness of their first encounter.

But the dream itself wasn’t what Vegeta kept coming back to. It was the tight, uncomfortable feeling that knotted in his stomach every time he wondered what Goku might have dreamt in exchange.

But Cap4 was quick to draw him back to reality. “ _Core installation complete_ ,” it chirped into Vegeta’s headset. “ _Please reseal hull tiles and return to airlock._ ”

Vegeta grunted in the affirmative, quickly finishing up his work and tucking the ruined cores into his repair kit before he moved to stand up. A fresh wave of dizziness washed over him as he stood to his full height, and he reached up reflexively to wipe the sweat from his brow before remembering his face-plate was in the way.

“Cap4, re-run diagnostics on the communications array,” he ordered.

The AI went to work, and Vegeta waited in silence for its response. He took a moment to gaze upon the infinite expanse of stars that stretched out beyond him, their light somehow feeling more real, more tangible out here than they ever could from behind a ship’s porthole. If only the nameless planet wasn’t floating beneath the ship’s orbit, marring the otherwise pristine vista, Vegeta might have actually enjoyed the view. Instead, the mere sight of the world below him filled him with a profound revulsion, and he had to swallow down the feeling of unease that clawed its way up his throat.

Finally, Cap4 chimed again in his ear.

“ _Comm array repair successful. Replacement cores fully functional.”_

Vegeta let out a relieved breath. “Copy that. Returning to airlock now.”

 

* * *

 

The sensation of gravity beneath Vegeta’s feet was a welcome reprieve as he re-entered the airlock. He couldn’t wait to shrug off his spacesuit and meet Goku on the gravity deck—given the choice between the punishing crush of five-hundred G or the disorienting vertigo of microgravity, he’d choose the gravity deck every time.

“Cap4, close outer airlock door and re-pressurize,” Vegeta said as he dropped his repair kit to the floor. The door behind him closed, and Vegeta watched the pressure gauge near the inner door slowly begin to climb up. By the time it reached one standard atmosphere, he was itching to disconnect his suit umbilical get out of his hot, uncomfortable suit.

“Cap4, open inner airlock door.”

Vegeta waited a moment for the ship to heed his instructions. Then another moment.

But nothing happened.

Vegeta exhaled a sharp, impatient breath. “Cap4, open the inner airlock door. _Now_.”

Still nothing happened.

Fantastic, Vegeta thought. First the communication systems had failed, and now the AI’s voice recognition software was glitching. Things couldn’t be better. Vegeta huffed bitterly in his helmet before storming up to the control panel near the airlock door, and slammed the button that would manually open the door.

Vegeta immediately felt his ki and blood pressure spike when the airlock remained stubbornly closed.

“Cap4,” he grit through his teeth, only half-expecting a response. “There seems to be an issue with the airlock.”

Finally, Cap4 deigned to answer him.  “ _Airlock controls overridden. Please open manually from internal control panel._ ”

For a moment, Vegeta was too shocked to even curse at the AI.

“What do you mean, overridden?” he finally snapped. “Overridden by what?”

It was then that Vegeta caught sight of movement in the corner of his eye, and realized that he could sense Goku’s ki approaching him. Vegeta turned to face the small window that overlooked the corridor outside the airlock and saw that Goku was only meters away.

“Kakarot,” he called over the radio. “There’s been some kind of malfunction in the airlock—I swear this entire goddamn ship is falling apart—I need you to open the inner airlock door, the control panel should be right in front of you—”

“There hasn’t been a malfunction, Vegeta.”

Goku’s voice sounded strangely hollow over the radio, but Vegeta couldn’t blame the quality of the transmission this time. There was an unmistakable coldness there, and Vegeta recognized it immediately. He felt something like ice crawl up his spine at the realization, then spread through every nerve of his body—he tried to say something, anything, but a suffocating paralysis had closed around his throat.

Goku’s lips twisted into a predatory smirk, and Vegeta knew at that moment that he wasn’t dealing with Goku at all. Whoever was facing him from the other side of the airlock wore the same skin as the thing that had emerged from the medbay two nights before.

“Give Bulma some credit,” Goku said, chuckling as he rapped a fist against the bulkhead. “The ship is in perfect working order, and the airlock… is working just fine.”

“Then let me out,” Vegeta finally managed to snarl at him.

The smirk on Goku’s lips fell away completely as his face hardened into a darker expression.

“No.”

The paralysis gripping Vegeta subsided, burned away in a sudden flare of rage, and he slammed a fist against the bulkhead. “Open this airlock _right now_ , Kakarot, or I swear to you I’ll blast the fucking thing open myself!”

“You’re certainly welcome to try,” Goku said, his voice coy and syrupy over a barely-concealed layer of threat. “But if you take a look at that pressure gauge in there, you might notice it’s gone up quite a bit past one atmosphere. One quick press of this button here and that door behind you will spring wide open, and you’ll be blasted halfway back to that hideous planet before you even have the chance to fire a ki blast.”

Goku wasn’t lying. Vegeta glanced at the pressure gauge, and saw that the airlock was pushing ten atmospheres and still climbing. If Goku opened the outer door now, Vegeta wouldn’t have to worry about a slow suffocation in space—he’d be lucky if his suit even stayed intact during the decompression.

“You wouldn’t,” Vegeta hissed.  “Kakarot, snap out of this, this isn’t _you—_ ”

“Then tell me, Vegeta,” Goku said, lips curling back into a taunting smirk. “Who do you think I am, exactly?”

The question chilled Vegeta, and he was at a loss to answer. He opened his mouth to shout back at him—to curse and yell and scream at this demon that had the gall to take Goku’s form—but his mouth had gone impossibly dry, his throat threatening to close up entirely.

“Kakarot, please,” Vegeta finally managed to choke, and he hated the desperation creeping into his voice. He stepped away from the bulkhead, trying to steady himself as he drew in a deep, shaking breath. He felt like he had stepped back out into zero G, spinning away into the void like his tether had been cut.

“Kakarot,” he repeated, his voice steadier, but barely rising above a whisper this time. “What did you dream last night?”

The thing that wasn’t Goku smirked wider. “I saw something very much like this. Only you were on this side of the airlock, ignoring the sobs of some pathetic prisoner. Bending your knee to Frieza’s will, like a coward.”

Vegeta closed his eyes. “The Vodurian spy.”

Goku went on as if Vegeta hadn’t spoken at all. “Why is that, Vegeta? That someone as powerful as yourself is constantly brought to heel by everyone around you—Frieza, _me—_ ”

“Kakarot, I don’t know what you think you’re playing at—”

“Why?” The taunting edge in Goku’s voice had vanished, suddenly dipping back into coldness. “You could rule the Earth—you could own the entire galaxy if you wished—so why don’t you? What’s stopping you?”

The question felt like a slap in the face, and Vegeta reeled where he stood, struggling for an answer.

“What’s stopping _you_?” he finally shot back.

Something dark flickered in Goku’s eyes. “To be honest with you, Vegeta, I’m not sure there’s anything stopping me anymore.”

Vegeta shook his head, trying to dispel the dizziness that was washing over him. His suit was so hot that he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t lapsed into another fever.

“Kakarot, what are you talking about—”

“I was sent to Earth as an infant to purge it,” Goku said, the coldness of his voice unwavering. “To conquer it.” He paused, licking his lips as if the thought excited him. “What’s there stopping me from finishing the job? I could do it. We could both do it. Why bother denying our natures, Vegeta?”

“Stop this, Kakarot,” Vegeta hissed. “I don’t care what’s wrong with you, or what you think you saw in your dreams, but I don’t want to hear another word of this fucking nonsense—let me out of this airlock _now—_ ”

“Why are you fighting, Vegeta?” Goku said, his voice dropping lower until it was almost a purr. “We could be so much more than this, my Prince.”

Vegeta swallowed thickly. Something hot and painful stirred in his chest, and slowly he began to understand what the demon before him was trying to accomplish.

“So that’s what you’re doing, Kakarot?” he shouted. “Trying to bait me? Trying to tempt me into, what, lashing out in some senseless act of destruction? ”

Goku rose an eyebrow, his expression shifting to condescension. “It worked for Babidi.”

The maelstrom of fear and rage spiraling through Vegeta suddenly threatened to consume him entirely. As he closed the distance between himself and the airlock’s small window, he wondered if his suit could withstand a sudden transformation into Super Saiyan.

“You bastard,” he snarled, slamming his fists against the bulkhead. “If you don’t let me out of this fucking airlock right now, I will _burn down_ this entire ship, Kakarot, I will destroy us _both_ if I have to—”

“Such a disappointment,” Goku sighed. “So much rage, completely wasted. You could have been something extraordinary, Vegeta.”

Vegeta continued to bang on the bulkhead, screaming and hollering at full volume until suddenly, he wasn’t.

Goku released the airlock’s outer door.

It felt like the entire universe had shredded apart around Vegeta, his world suddenly a black, spiraling chaos as he spun away from the ship. Time seemed to crystallize around him, every second taking on an agonizing slowness as his brain struggled to catch up with what had just happened. A primitive, purely brainstem panic overtook him, and he was powerless to do anything but take a cold, clinical inventory of the severity of his situation.

His umbilical had been ripped off in the blast, and had torn a massive hole from the front of his suit in the process. He could feel his ki sizzling across his body, protecting him from the effects of the sudden decompression, but it was futile—without the tether, there was no oxygen, no pressure, and he gasped silently for air that never came. The backup power in his suit kicked in uselessly, and he was vaguely aware of every read-out on his HUD flashing a furious red, trying in vain to alert him of his predicament. As if he weren’t aware already. He couldn’t breathe—everything else was secondary.

He was going to die out here.

He knew he only had a few precious seconds of consciousness left to him. He used it to flare his ki, and he finally stopped pinwheeling through the void, coming to an abrupt stop. He had spun fifty, maybe sixty meters away from the ship, too far for him to fly back to it before he passed out. He was going to die here, left out in the vacuum like worthless flotsam, doomed to float above the planet until his orbit decayed and his body burned up in the atmosphere.

He could think of no death less honorable.

He fixed his eyes on the ship, wondering why it was still there—it hadn’t moved, hadn’t even begun to accelerate. Vegeta had assumed Goku would move quickly to abandon him the moment the airlock opened.

Unless—maybe the spell had passed, the same way it had two nights before—

 _Kakarot,_ Vegeta mouthed silently. Without air to breathe, there was no air to speak, and the radio connection tethering them was useless in the vacuum. Without words, Vegeta focused on Goku’s ki instead, the only thing he could sense as his brain began to flicker into unconsciousness. To Vegeta, it burned hotter and brighter than any of the thousands of stars shining down on him.

It was the last warmth he felt before everything went black.


	7. Antibody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild needle-phobia warning for some of the content at the end of the chapter.

* * *

The first thing Vegeta was aware of when he awoke was the bitter taste of senzu in his mouth.

He was lying on the floor. Somehow, he was in the airlock again—still in his torn spacesuit, helmet gone, but _alive_ —and he gasped violently for air as he he tried to sit up. But something pressed against him, keeping him down—he swung his head, his vision spinning as he tried to make sense of his surroundings, and his eyes fell upon Goku’s form, hunched over Vegeta’s body. He was clad in a spacesuit of his own, sans helmet or gloves, his face buried against Vegeta’s chest, his fists clutching so tightly at the material of Vegeta’s suit that his knuckles had gone pale.

At the sound of Vegeta’s sudden, desperate gasp for air, Goku lifted his head. The only thing that shocked Vegeta more than the fact that he was somehow alive was how Goku looked—his eyes were red and inflamed, his face wet and smeared from crying. Their eyes met for only a brief moment, and Goku immediately uttered a pained, shaking breath as fresh tears spilled down his cheeks.

“Vegeta,” he sobbed, and Vegeta nearly flinched when Goku’s palms were suddenly upon his face, his hands pressed against Vegeta’s cheeks as if trying to reassure himself that Vegeta were really, truly alive. “Vegeta, oh Kami, you’re—you’re _alive—_ I thought I had killed you, I was so sure you were gone—I can’t believe I did that, Vegeta, I _killed_ you, I… I...”

Vegeta lifted a hand to wrap around one of Goku’s wrists, but stopped short of pulling Goku’s hand away when Goku burst into a fresh wave of choked sobbing. Goku’s head fell again to Vegeta’s chest, and Vegeta watched him as he shook from the force of his weeping.

As if moving on its own volition, Vegeta watched as he raised his hand—heavy and clumsy in his suit glove—to the back of Goku’s head, his fingers curling into the messy spikes of Goku’s hair. He held onto the base of Goku’s skull like it was the only thing tethering him to reality, the feeling of Goku’s hair in his fingers concrete evidence that this was happening, this was all _real_ —that despite everything, he had somehow survived.

“You son of a bitch,” Vegeta finally rasped when he found the will to speak.

Goku lifted his head again, wincing as more tears squeezed from his eyes.

“Vegeta, I’m so—I’m so sorry,” he stammered, his bottom lip quivering as he spoke. “I’m so, _so_ , sorry—I don’t—I don’t understand what’s happening to me, I would never—I would never...I...”

But Goku’s words failed him as he broke down into another round of sobbing that wracked his entire body, his throat bobbing as his cries cracked into hiccups.

“Kakarot, get a grip on yourself,” Vegeta said, meaning to sound harsh, but surprised at the calmness in his own voice. He should have been angry, _furious,_ at what Goku had done to him—he should have been dragging Goku across the airlock and throwing him out into the abyss to see how much _he_ liked it—but he didn’t. Instead he could feel nothing but stunned relief, and a strange aching in his chest that threatened at any moment to break him apart. Something he struggled to put a word to. He decided to blame it on shock.

Vegeta slowly released his grip on Goku, but couldn’t bring himself to look away from him. Vegeta had never seen Goku crying before, and he found he hated the sight of it—it only made the uncomfortable ache in his chest hurt worse. Part of him was gripped by the ridiculous impulse to reach up and brush Goku’s tears away. A more insistent part of him wanted to reach up and hit him for the display.  
  
He did neither.  
  
“Stop crying, Kakarot,” he finally said. “Help me out of this suit.”

Goku gave him a quick nod, and began wiping his eyes with the back of his hands, choking back the last sobs spilling from his chest. He stood up from the floor of the airlock, his body still shaking, and Vegeta followed suit.

Vegeta turned until his back faced Goku. He undid the seals of his gloves and removed them, dropping them to the floor. They both stood in silence as Goku undid the clasps connecting the bottom of Vegeta’s suit to the top, and helped him lift the bulky torso component over his head.

Vegeta stepped out of the bottom of the suit, feeling relieved to be wearing nothing but his blue battlesuit again. He turned around to face Goku, reaching his hands to the clasps of Goku’s suit to return the favor.

“Why are you wearing this?” Vegeta asked. “It would have been faster to use Instant Transmission to come get me—one split second of vacuum wouldn’t have hurt you.”

“I tried,” Goku said quietly as Vegeta helped him out of the top part of the suit. “But I couldn’t do it. It takes a perfectly clear mind to do it, and… I couldn’t. My head’s never felt so mixed up before. I had to suit up as fast as I could when I… when I realized what I had done.”

Vegeta gave a short nod in acknowledgment, setting the suit top on the floor as Goku pulled himself out of the bulky legs. Goku stood naked save for his underwear—clearly in his haste to retrieve Vegeta, he had skipped donning any kind of undersuit.

“Something’s not right, Vegeta,” Goku went on. He hugged his arms around his stomach, as if he were trying to protect himself from the cold of the airlock. “It’s like there’s something inside me—like something’s hiding just at the edge of my thoughts. When I start… acting like that… it’s like something is trying to split my heart open and get out.”

Goku looked away from Vegeta, his face crumpling like he might start crying again.

“Look at me,” Vegeta said, setting a firm hand on Goku’s shoulder. Goku hesitated, but finally dragged his gaze back to Vegeta, and Vegeta saw that Goku’s eyes were watering again. “We’re going to figure this out. Before it kills us.”

Goku’s lip was quivering again, and before Vegeta could react, Goku had wrapped his arms around Vegeta, squeezing him in a tight embrace. Vegeta’s eyes widened, and his body stiffened against Goku’s bare chest.

“Vegeta, I’m sorry, I’m _so sorry_ ,” he said in a rushed whisper. “I don’t know what’s happening to me, I don’t want to hurt you—I _never_ want to hurt you, I don’t know why this is happening, I’m _so sorry_ —”

Vegeta felt Goku bury his face against Vegeta’s neck, and Vegeta’s immediate reflex was to push Goku away as hard as he could manage.

“Kakarot!” he hissed through clenched teeth, stumbling back into the bulkhead. “Get it together! Your blubbering isn’t helping anything!”

Goku quickly wiped at his eye as a stray tear began to roll down the side of his face. His breath shook as he nodded at Vegeta’s words.

Vegeta sighed. “Look, you don’t have to apologize to me,” he said, forcing himself to soften his tone before Goku had another meltdown. “I… I get it. I know this isn’t you.”

Goku buried his face in his hands, taking a deep breath as if to calm himself. “I know. I know, I’m sorry. I’m not helping either of us by… by losing it like this.”

“Listen,” Vegeta said. “I’m going to go to the bridge. I’m going to contact Bulma now that the comm array is fixed. Do me a favor and take my ruined suit to the recycler—can you do that for me?”

Goku nodded again, and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that for you, Vegeta.”

Vegeta picked up the top of his suit and handed it to Goku, who quietly left the airlock, avoiding Vegeta’s gaze as he passed through the inner door. Vegeta wasn’t exactly eager to hang behind either, and quickly followed suit.

“Cap4, close inner airlock door,” Vegeta ordered once he was in the corridor.

It was a relief when the AI promptly did as it was told.

 

* * *

_Initiating commlink. Waiting for Earth to accept connection._

Vegeta watched the rotating Capsule Corp logo on the bridge’s main terminal as he waited impatiently for Bulma to pick up. Part of him was desperate for her to answer immediately, but part of him dreaded facing her at all—what exactly was he supposed to say to her? _Hello, Bulma, Kakarot and I are complete idiots who managed to expose ourselves to some sort of hostile alien pathogen and now Kakarot’s losing his fucking mind and tried to murder me—thoughts?_

He didn’t have time to prepare himself before the waiting screen vanished, replaced by Bulma’s face.

Vegeta was struck immediately by how tired she looked—dark circles ringed her eyes, and her normally bright skin was unusually dull and sallow. Smoke wafted up from a what Vegeta assumed was a cigarette she was holding offscreen—a habit he had no idea she had picked up again. If Vegeta had to guess, it looked as if she had fallen into a routine of all-nighters.

“Well, fuck me,” she said flatly. “So His Majesty _finally_ decides to make contact after months of complete radio silence.”

Vegeta pinched the bridge of his nose and clenched his jaw.

“Bulma,” he said, forcing himself to ignore the immediate hostility of her voice. “We have a problem.”

“Really?” Bulma snapped. “That’s it? We don’t hear from you for all this time, and that’s how you greet me? Not, ‘hey, how are things?’ Or, ‘how is Trunks doing?’ Nope, just straight to ‘hey woman, I broke the ship’, or some bullshit—’”

 _I thought you wanted to_ avoid _all contact with me,_ Vegeta wanted to shout at her, but he resisted the impulse. Despite having eaten a senzu bean only minutes ago, he was far too tired for this.  He couldn’t be bothered to muster the energy it would take to fall back into their old, exhausting courting habits.

“Bulma,” he repeated, firmer this time. “This is serious. Kakarot and I have gotten ourselves into some seriously fucked up shit, and I would _really_ appreciate your help in the matter.”

Bulma paused, clearly taken aback. She made a motion offscreen as if she were ashing out her cigarette.

“All right, sorry,” she muttered. “What have you gotten yourselves into now?”

Vegeta took a deep breath before he went ahead. He tried as succinctly as possible to fill her in on the situation, and he spoke at length about the alien planet they had landed on, the strange black substance they had been exposed to, and the illness that had followed.

He faltered when he reached the moment to explain what Kakarot had done.  
  
Thankfully, Bulma intervened at that point to speak.  
  
“So, let me get this straight,” she said. Her eyes were wide, and her face had turned several shades paler over the course of Vegeta’s explanation. “You landed on a seemingly dead planet. You both get covered in some sort of… toxin, bacteria—who knows. I don’t know a thing about medicine, Vegeta, but those symptoms you both had do sound pretty… concerning.” Bulma paused, lifting a coffee mug to her lips and taking a sip, as if giving herself a moment to think. “But… I don’t quite understand the problem,” she continued. “The illness lasted, what, forty-eight, thirty-six hours? I mean, you look fine now, Vegeta.”  
  
“It’s… not me,” Vegeta said quietly, his mouth going uncomfortably dry. “Something is terribly wrong with Kakarot.”  
  
Bulma’s eyebrows rose higher in alarm. Vegeta knew that even if she were uninterested in Vegeta’s well-being, she wouldn’t tolerate the thought of her best friend being in danger.  
  
“The night we got back to Capsule 4, after Kakarot had a seizure,” Vegeta forced himself to go on, “he had some sort of… behavioural episode. He started acting completely out of character—he cornered me in my cabin, I thought he was going to...I don’t even know. I thought at first he was having some sort of reaction to the sedative I gave him, but… it happened again this morning.”  
  
Vegeta buried his face in his hands, letting out a breath as if he had been holding it.  
  
“Vegeta?” Bulma said, the pitch of her voice climbing with worry.  
  
“He tried to kill me.” Vegeta immediately felt his throat begin to close up and felt his hands begin to shake, as if speaking the words out loud finally brought the entire situation into clear, terrifying focus—in one moment, the situation had taken on a sense of reality that he had been too stunned to feel back in the airlock.  
  
“What?” Bulma asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “No, Goku would never do something like that, that’s not possible—”

“I know that,” Vegeta retorted, unable to stop the anger from creeping into his words. “But it’s not _him_ —it’s like something else is taking over him. It’s like he’s someone else entirely when it happens.”  
  
Bulma was still shaking her head. “How… how did he—”  
  
“It was in the airlock.” Vegeta’s words began to tumble out of him in a strained rush. “The comm array was damaged by a solar flare—I had to do go outside to do repairs, and when I got back to the airlock, he had disabled all the controls. He jacked up the pressure and… he just ejected me. My umbilical cable tore and I… I blacked out. Gods, I should be dead.”  
  
Bulma was slumped back in her seat, staring away from the commscreen.  
  
“Jesus, Vegeta.”  
  
“Do you see our problem, now?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bulma said, her gaze still unfocused. “Yeah, that’s a fucking problem all right. Where’s Goku now?”  
  
Vegeta shook his head. “I don’t know. He was in hysterics when he brought me back into the ship. I sent him away so I could come speak with you.”  
  
“So it’s just Goku having these episodes? You haven’t been having any sudden psychotic breaks?”  
  
“Not to my knowledge,” he said. “Just… unusual dreams.”  
  
Bulma finally looked back at him, narrowing her eyes. “… dreams?”  
  
Vegeta sighed. This all sounded increasingly more insane the more he talked about it.  
  
“Goku and I have also been having dreams where we seem… to be seeing into each other’s memories. No, it doesn’t make any sense to me either, but this never happened before we were infected.”  
  
“Not even after your, uh... Fusion?  
  
"No,” Vegeta said through clenched teeth, though at this point he wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t part of the larger puzzle.  
  
“Okay,” Bulma sighed, rubbing at her temples as if soothing a migraine. “Look, Vegeta, I don’t know what to even tell you. This all sounds completely nuts. And if we’re really dealing with some kind of infectious agent, I’m gonna have to consult with my biomed division and let you know where to go from there, because I am at a loss here.”  
  
Vegeta nodded. “Fine.”  
  
“Look, give me an hour, two hours tops. I’ll get in contact with you as soon as I can figure out where to go from here.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Bulma reached across her desk-space to terminate the transmission, but Vegeta spoke at the last moment before she disconnected.  
  
“Bulma?” he said quietly.  
  
Bulma cast him a stiff look. “Yes?”  
  
“How _is_ Trunks?”  
  
Bulma lowered her arm, her posture softening slightly.  
  
“He’s… he’s well,” she said. She paused before adding, “he misses you, Vegeta.”  
  
Vegeta swallowed, nodding again. “After you get back to me, I’m going to start our trip back to Earth. Let him know I’ll be home as quickly as I can manage.”  
  
Bulma said nothing, and Vegeta terminated the connection.

 

 

* * *

 

 

After ending his conversation with Bulma, Vegeta wasted no time making his way to the gravity deck. His mind was still reeling from the incident in the airlock, and he hated how shaken and unfocused he felt. Training, as always, was his go-to remedy: focus the body, he knew, and the mind tended to follow.

He sensed Goku’s ki several decks up, in his cabin. Vegeta had no idea what he was doing, and he wasn’t in any rush to find out. All Vegeta knew was that he couldn’t bear to be anywhere near him right now.

“Cap4, lock gravity room doors until I say otherwise,” Vegeta barked. “Set gravity to five-hundred G.”

The AI complied. The room flooded with red light and Vegeta felt his muscles stiffen against the suffocating crush of the gravity field. Every joint in his body immediately felt on the brink of rupture, every bone threatening to crack under the intense weight bearing down on him.

But the pain felt good. Clarifying. He channeled it through his nerves, focused it inward until his ki surged and whipped around him, and he took on his Super Saiyan form.

His routine became a blur. He damaged half the training bots with his fists alone, and shorted out the rest with a scattershot of ki blasts. He made a mental note to ask Cap4 about replacements later, and vaporized their metal remains before falling to the floor. He began to subject himself to a series of push-ups, then moved to one-armed push-ups, then shouted at the computer to increase the gravity until it felt like his shoulders were about to dislocate.

He had thoroughly lost track of how long he’d been training by the time Cap4 interrupted him.

_"Vegeta, a recorded transmission has been received from Earth.”_

Vegeta brought himself to his hands and knees. He brushed a hand across his brow to wipe away his sweat, his arm aching with the effort.

“Bulma?” he asked.

“ _C_ _orrect.”_

“Return gravity to one G and unlock the gravity deck doors,” Vegeta ordered, his body resenting the feeling as gravity returned to normal.

Vegeta returned to the bridge immediately, impressed that Bulma had responded in just a little over an hour, as promised. He didn’t even bother to take his seat at the bridge’s main terminal before he tapped at the console to play the message, and Bulma’s face reappeared on the viewscreen.

“All right, so, I just consulted with with some of my more trustworthy people in R&D,” Bulma said, leaning in close to the screen. “Judging by your symptoms, it sounds like you had some kind of encephalitis, but it seems like you’re mostly better now, so hey—good news there, right? But beyond that, we’re really not gonna know what we’re dealing with until you send us some samples. If you have any of the actual substance you came into contact with, that would be great. Also, blood samples. Yeah, you’re gonna have to convince Goku to take a needle—sucks to be you.

Anyway, I’m attaching a list of instructions to this transmission so you can properly collect and store the samples and load them into a jump probe—that’s probably the fastest way to do this; it’ll probably take about a day or so to get here based on your coordinates. So, yeah. I’ll leave you to it, I guess. Drop me a line if you have questions.”

The recording ended, and Vegeta tapped the touchscreen in front of him, opening the list of instructions that Bulma had appended to the end of her message. Vegeta sighed as he scrolled through the file, and tapped again to download it to the ship’s memory.

It looked like he had some homework to do.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The medbot’s technique was uncomfortable at best, rough and hamfisted at worst—Vegeta hissed as its spider-like hand encircled his arm and jabbed its needle into the crook of his elbow. He watched as it filled a vial with his blood, and wondered how he was ever going to convince Goku to go through with this.

Once the blood draw was complete, Vegeta hopped down from the medbay’s examination table and grabbed the sealed vial, loading it into a small container that already contained two other glass vials—ones filled with samples of black ooze that he had managed to scrape off of the clothing he had worn on the planet’s surface. It had been a pain in the ass to to dig out his contaminated battlesuit from their landing supplies, but if that’s what it was going to take to get some answers, then so be it.

Getting blood from Goku, however, was going to be another matter entirely.

But there was no point delaying the inevitable. Vegeta took in a deep breath before moving toward the medbay’s comscreen, and tapped a button to connect with Goku’s cabin.

“Kakarot?” Vegeta said.

A few moments of silence passed before Goku answered him. “Vegeta?”

“I need you to come to the medbay.”

“What? Why? Is something wrong?”

“No, I managed to contact Bulma, and she wants us to run, ah... some tests. Regarding the infection.” Vegeta winced at the half-lie.

“Oh, okay. I’ll be right there.”

Vegeta released the button on the commscreen and moved back toward the examination table. He carefully set out a fresh collecting vial and reset the medbot to be ready when Goku arrived. Not that it mattered—he was sure Goku would have it reduced to a sparking puddle of melted plastic and metal the second he realized what Vegeta was doing.

Vegeta soon felt Goku’s ki approaching, and he turned to face the medbay door as Goku entered.

Goku’s shoulders were oddly hunched as he stepped into the room, as if he were trying to curl in on himself and hide. He walked in just far enough for the medbay doors to hiss shut behind him, but no further, as if he were afraid to come too close to Vegeta.

“Hey,” he said, forcing an awkward smile as he lifted one hand to rub at the back of his neck. “How are you doing? Are you feeling okay? You know, after—”

“I’m fine, Kakarot,” Vegeta said tersely. He looked away, feigning a sudden interest in the medical instruments laid out next to the exam table. “I need you to come take a seat here.”

Goku’s eyes widened slightly, but he complied after a brief moment of hesitation. He moved toward Vegeta and hopped up on the table, trying to appear casual, but Vegeta caught the way he immediately slumped forward, clasping his hands as he nervously began to rotate his thumbs.

Vegeta was silent as he took ahold of Goku’s wrist, turning Goku’s hand over until the underside of his arm was exposed. Vegeta quickly wiped at the inside of Goku’s elbow with an alcohol swab before he went to work tying on a rubber tourniquet above his elbow.

“What are you doing?” Goku asked. Vegeta instantly picked up on the rising anxiety in his voice.

“Make a fist with your hand,” Vegeta ordered, and pushed a button on the medbot to start the blood draw. “This will only hurt for a moment.”

One of the medbot’s articulated fingers quickly unsheathed a needle and began to move toward Goku’s arm. Goku saw what the medbot was doing, and his response was immediate.

“No!” he wailed before jumping clear off the table and slamming clumsily into one of the medbay’s storage cabinets. His face had completely blanched, and he shook his head frantically as he pressed his back against the cabinet. “Please, Vegeta, anything but that, please no, I don’t want—”

Vegeta let out a defeated sigh and rubbed at his forehead with his fingers.

“Kakarot,” he warned. “Bulma asked us for blood samples. She won’t be able to help us without them.”

But Goku was beyond reason. He was edging away from Vegeta now, moving closer to the door. “No, _no_ , I’m not doing it—keep that thing away from me, Vegeta—”

“Damn it, Kakarot!” Vegeta shouted. “It will only take a minute! You’re lucky Bulma didn’t ask for a fucking spinal tap!”

Goku shrank back at Vegeta’s raised voice, and beneath his mounting impatience, Vegeta almost felt bad about it.

“Can’t you just—I dunno, punch me in the nose really hard?” Goku whined, his knees trembling beneath him as he spoke. “Can’t you get my blood that way?”

“No, Kakarot, that’s not going to work—”

But before Vegeta could finish his sentence, Goku had made a dash for the door. He was nearly into the ship’s corridor by the time Vegeta lunged after him, grabbing him by the back of his gi. He hauled Goku backwards into the medbay, earning a sharp cry from from him, and Vegeta twirled Goku around until he held him by the biceps.

Vegeta could feel Goku trembling in his hands, and Goku’s eyes were shining like he might burst into tears again.

“Gods, Kakarot, you aren’t exaggerating,” Vegeta muttered, his eyes widening at the palpable terror he could feel rolling off Goku. “You’re really this terrified of a needle?”

Goku’s face was scarlet with shame, and he looked away from Vegeta’s face. He didn’t answer, but Vegeta saw as he offered a weak, almost imperceptible nod.

Vegeta closed his eyes as he softened his grip on Goku’s arms. “Please, Kakarot,” he pleaded. “If you’ll just do this one thing for me, I’ll… I’ll consider the entire episode in the airlock completely forgiven.”

This only made the redness of Goku’s cheeks deepen and spread across his face until it tinged the tips of his ears.

“I… I want _you_ to do it,” he finally said, so quiet that Vegeta wasn’t sure he had heard him properly.

“What?”

“I don’t want the robot to do it,” Goku said. His face was still turned away, but Vegeta could see the strain in his expression, the way his lips were pulled into a tight, uncomfortable grimace. “If I have to get stabbed with a needle… I want you to be the one to do it.

Vegeta thought about it for a moment.

“Fine,” he eventually conceded. After all, there was no sense having Goku destroy a perfectly good medbot. “That’s a compromise I can make. Get on the table.”

Goku swallowed and hesitated before he did as Vegeta ordered. Slowly, he crossed the medbay and pulled himself back onto the table.

Vegeta followed him, and hit a button on the medbot that forced it to fold up on itself and retreat to its compartment under the table. He pulled the nearby rolling tray toward himself, carefully arranging  the instruments he would need.

When Vegeta turned back to face Goku, he was already offering up an arm for him.

“Make a fist,” Vegeta told him again. Goku followed his instruction, and even with his hand clenched, Vegeta could see his arm trembling.

Vegeta felt along the inside of Goku’s elbow, gently palpating for a vein. It wasn’t so hard—Vegeta had given himself more than a few needles in the past. It wasn’t unusual for PTO soldiers to resort to cheap, injectable stimulants on purges that lasted for days, or weeks, and Vegeta had done this in far worse conditions. Once he was satisfied, Vegeta swabbed Goku’s skin again.

Goku flinched the moment the alcohol touched his skin.

“I can’t do this,” he said, his voice panicked again, and Vegeta could feel him trying to pull his arm away.

But Vegeta strengthened his hold on Goku’s forearm.

“You _can_ ,” he said firmly. “Think about something else, Kakarot.”

Vegeta reached for a needle off the instrument tray, and Goku winced and looked away when Vegeta uncapped it.

“I can’t think about anything else,” he whimpered.

Vegeta hesitated as he held the needle above Goku’s vein, afraid that Goku would start thrashing the moment he felt it break the skin. He needed to distract him.

“You know, I had a dream last night, too,” he said, steadying his hand. “I saw the first time you met Bulma.”

Vegeta watched carefully as Goku’s face softened at the memory, his mouth loosening from a tight grimace to an almost sheepish grin.

“Oh wow, I was just a kid then,” Goku said. He paused before letting out a soft, genuine chuckle. “I thought her car was a monster, can you believe that?”

Despite the faint trembling in Goku’s arm, Vegeta could see Goku’s entire body posture begin to relax.

“I can,” he said, and seized his opportunity. In one quick, smooth motion, he slipped the needle into Goku’s vein.

Goku hissed at the intrusion, but didn’t thrash or pull away. Vegeta let out the breath he was holding and quickly attached the collecting tube.

“Ow, Vegeta!” Goku said, and Vegeta resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“You’ll live,” he said flatly, removing the vial once it was full, and finally withdrawing the needle. Vegeta grabbed a cotton pad from his tray and pressed it to Goku’s arm. “Hold that.”

Vegeta turned away, discarding the needle in a recycler before he slid the blood-filled tube into the container with the other sample vials. Once the container was sealed closed, he loaded it into a much smaller Capsule, as per Bulma’s instructions. All that was left now was to load it into a probe and send it to Earth. And hope for answers.

“There,” Vegeta said. He moved back towards Goku, who was still sitting on the examination table, dabbing at the last few drops of blood before tossing his cotton pad away.

“I guess that wasn’t so bad,” he said, his grin apologetic as he reached with his other arm to rub at the back of his head.

“Good.” Vegeta leaned in closer, smirking as he untied Goku’s tourniquet. “But don’t expect me to kiss it better for you.”

Goku’s blush returned, mottling his cheeks with pink.

“Well, thank you Vegeta,” he said, looking down at the floor as he spoke. “I appreciate it.”

Vegeta said nothing, turning away to clear away the rest of his instruments, but Goku’s hand around his wrist stopped him.

“Vegeta?” Goku said.

Vegeta’s eyes briefly flicked down at where Goku held him in place, but he resisted the impulse to jerk away. “Yes?”

“Did you mean what you said before?” Goku asked. “You know, about… forgiving what I did to you today?”

“I already have too many grudges against you, Kakarot,” Vegeta snorted. “I don’t think I can commit to another one.”

“Vegeta, I’m being serious.”

Goku’s fingers slipped away from where he held Vegeta, and even with his gloves on, Vegeta’s wrist felt suddenly naked at the loss.

Vegeta swallowed before giving a curt nod.

“So am I,” he said. “Consider yourself forgiven, Kakarot."

Vegeta began to turn away again, expecting that to be the end of it.

What he wasn’t expecting was for Goku to lean forward instead, wrapping his arms around Vegeta in a sudden, crushing hug.

“Thank you,” Goku breathed in a pained whisper, tightening his hold on Vegeta as Vegeta’s eyes opened impossibly wide. “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am Vegeta—I just… I feel so awful.”

Vegeta stiffened in Goku’s arms, but despite every natural impulse telling him to tear Goku off of him and hook him in the jaw, he remained still. When Goku had embraced him in the airlock, Vegeta had been too stunned, too overwhelmed with shock to do anything but recoil, but now—he felt himself actually leaning into Goku’s embrace.

There was comfort here. Warmth. And after everything he had endured in the past few days, Vegeta was too tired to refuse it.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta choked. It hurt to breathe, and he wasn’t sure if Goku’s arms squeezing his ribs were entirely to blame. “I’ve already told you to stop apologizing.

“I know,” Goku said, his voice muffled as he nestled his face against Vegeta’s neck. The feeling sent a painful thrill down Vegeta’s spine, and his first instinct was to reach up, his fingers digging into Goku’s biceps as if to pull his arms away. But Vegeta hesitated, and Goku only embraced him tighter.

“I know,” Goku repeated. “I just—I can’t stop thinking about it, Vegeta, and I’m so scared it’s going to keep happening—I _never_ want that to happen again—”

“Kakarot,” Vegeta whispered, and suddenly he was aware of Goku’s body trembling against him. Finally, he managed to pull away, holding Goku apart from himself at elbow’s length. “Gods, Kakarot, are you crying agai—”

But Vegeta never had the chance to finish his question, his words suddenly silenced by Goku’s lips pressed against his.

Vegeta went completely rigid, as if he had been paralyzed by the sudden shock of ki that thrummed down his spine, out through his nerves, and across his skin. He couldn’t tell if it was his own ki, or Goku’s, or some combination of both, like some strange echo of their Fusion. Vegeta felt himself clutching at Goku’s arms again, gripping him as if it might stop the room from spinning around them—Vegeta felt a heady sort of vertigo like he had stepped out into zero G again, only this time to be swallowed into the orbit of a singularity, thrown across the threshold of an event horizon he had no idea he had even been racing towards.

He felt Goku take a breath against his mouth and kiss him again, his lips still closed and chaste and softer than Vegeta could have ever imagined.

It took all of Vegeta’s strength to pull away again.

“ _Stop,_ ” he gasped, fingers clutching at Goku’s arms so tightly he was sure it would leave bruises. “This isn’t _you_ —”

“What?” Goku whispered, his hands suddenly cupping Vegeta’s face, forcing Vegeta to meet his eyes. “Vegeta, what are you talking about? Of course it’s me—”

And Vegeta looked, expecting to see the demon staring back, convinced this was some new, twisted method of torment—but he only saw Goku. Goku’s eyes were wide and honest and shining, and Vegeta wondered how he had ever expected to see malice there.

And then Goku was looking away, his hands falling from Vegeta’s face, and Vegeta didn’t miss the hurt that flashed across his features.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Goku stammered. “I—I shouldn’t have—”

But Vegeta pulled him back before he could slip away, his hands reaching to caress Goku’s jaw, then sliding to the back of his neck.

“Enough,” Vegeta breathed before he pulled Goku towards himself and crushed Goku's lips to his own.


	8. Lysis

The next few moments were a heated blur in Vegeta’s mind.

His hands knotted into Goku’s hair as he pressed their bodies closer, his tongue forcing its way past Goku’s lips, finally tasting him properly. He felt Goku moan against his mouth at the force of the kiss, and Vegeta felt a thrill pass through his body at the delicious sound of it, suddenly desperate to hear it again. He pulled his mouth away, catching his breath before his lips found Goku’s throat, tongue and teeth grazing at skin until Goku moaned for him again.

“Vegeta,” Goku panted, his hands suddenly at Vegeta’s hips, fingers digging into him, pulling him into the space between his legs. Vegeta’s mind filled with thoughts of pinning Goku down onto the exam table, straddling him—Gods, he was already aching at the thought, and he ground his hips into Goku’s

“Vegeta,” Goku moaned again, and he leaned in to kiss Vegeta—but as abruptly as they had come to together, Vegeta snapped to his senses. He held Goku away at arm’s length, stopping him from moving closer.

“Wait—stop,” Vegeta said, gasping for his breath, ignoring the desperate need that flooded through him with every beat of his pulse. “We have to—the samples…”

“What?” Goku said, and slowly his hands fell away from Vegeta’s hips. “Oh—oh yeah. Right.”

It took every reserve of his self-discipline for Vegeta to step away. He closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath, as if that would be enough to slow his racing heart and cool the heat that burned across his skin.

“We can’t afford to delay this any longer,” Vegeta muttered, pocketing the small capsule he had set aside on the metal examination tray. “I have to take this down to the launch module in the cargo bay. And then I’m getting us the hell out of this system.”

“Y-yeah,” Goku nodded, looking away from Vegeta as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I—I guess you’re right—we really can’t leave this place behind fast enough.”

“Right,” Vegeta said, turning to leave. Goku tried to say something else to him as he left, but Vegeta was already stumbling out of the medbay doors in a breathless rush.

Vegeta’s heart was still racing as he fled down the corridor, unable to explain to himself why he felt like he was running from something.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn’t until Vegeta was in the bridge that his thoughts began to catch up with him.

His hands moved across the terminal’s touch controls, flipping on the thrust engines that would kick them out of orbit. He followed up by keying in the command for the ki-drives to spool up, and tapped in Earth’s coordinates as a destination—within a few hours, they would be far enough from the planet’s gravity well to translate into subspace and begin their trip home, away from this entire hellish system once and for all.

Vegeta felt inclined to agree with Goku in that regard—they really couldn’t leave this place fast enough.

The thought of Goku immediately pulled at him. He tried not to focus on Goku’s ki—a task that proved about as successful as ignoring a song that wouldn’t stop playing in his head. It was hopeless—he was locked onto Goku’s every move, and even while he was trying to focus on the ship’s controls, all he could pay attention to was Goku leaving the medbay, wandering the corridors, and ultimately stopping on the ship’s observation deck. What the hell was he doing there?

While lost in thought, Vegeta realized suddenly that his hand was at his lips, as if he were trying to recall just how Goku had tasted. He pulled his hand away instantly at the realization, pulling his fingers through his hair as he let out a pained sigh.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself as he leaned on the console in front of him, squeezing his eyes shut as his thoughts raced through his mind in an incoherent blur. As if their situation hadn’t been precarious enough—he had somehow let things become even more complicated.

His thoughts returned quickly to Goku’s ki. It had been an impossible presence to ignore before, but now it burned insistently at the forefront of his mind. He opened his eyes, looking at the view-screens in front of him that displayed the ship’s calculated trajectory, readouts detailing velocity and fuel consumption and engine status, Cap4’s constant rundown of the ship’s vital systems—but Vegeta saw none of it. His focus was fractured, and he shifted in his seat, too hot and restless to remain still.

Vegeta abruptly stood up and left the bridge before he could think better of it.

In the ship’s corridor, he moved immediately toward the nearest stair-ladder and started to climb upward. The observation deck was the topmost deck of the ship, and Vegeta realized he hadn’t gone there since his initial tour of the ship. Neither had Goku, to his knowledge.

Vegeta couldn’t begin to imagine what the hell Goku was up to up there, but a sudden burst of apprehension gripped him as he reached the next deck and started climbing up again. Was he plotting something? Was he waiting there, deliberately luring Vegeta into some kind of trap?

Vegeta pushed aside the paranoia and made his final climb to the observation deck.

The deck was a large, circular room, its entire diameter wrapped with reinforced windows that provided a panorama of the view outside. There were no fixtures, no technological equipment—nothing to suggest any functional purpose. Vegeta couldn’t figure out why Bulma had even included it in the ship’s design; as far he could tell, the room served as a glaring vulnerability in the otherwise impenetrable hull. Vegeta’s best guess was that it was for sheer aesthetic purpose—perhaps Bulma had been keenly aware of how confined and claustrophobic the rest of the ship was, and felt the need to include at least one wide, open space.

But Vegeta found the weight of the darkness outside almost as suffocating as the narrow corridors and cramped cabins below. He had never been much of a stargazer, and the dim pinpoints of light encircling him were hardly enough to capture his attention. His gaze was drawn instead to Goku, who sat cross-legged on the opposite side of the room, eyes shut, hands relaxed in his lap.

He looked… peaceful. Relaxed. Vegeta felt relief wash over him—he could sense no hint of malice in Goku’s features.

“Kakarot?”

Goku opened his eyes. He turned to look at Vegeta, and even in the dim starlight, Vegeta could see Goku’s face flushing.

“Hey.”

Vegeta stepped forward, then hesitated. Whatever lay between them felt suddenly like a thick and impenetrable fog.

“I… I’ve set course for Earth,” Vegeta finally managed to tell him. “We’ll be out of the system in a few hours. The samples are ready to be launched then.”

“That’s good,” Goku said with a level of enthusiasm that sounded, to Vegeta’s ears, entirely forced. “Here’s hoping it’ll be enough for Bulma to help us.”

“Right.” Vegeta looked at his boots and cleared his throat. “So what exactly—what are you doing up here, anyway?”

Goku looked away, staring back out into the space beyond. “Meditating.”

Vegeta only blinked.

“...Meditating,” he repeated flatly.

Goku nodded. “Yeah. It’s really quiet up here,” he explained. “Nice and peaceful. You can barely even hear the engines humming. And the stars are nice company.”

“If you say so,” Vegeta muttered, finally finding the resolve to move towards the wall of glass and stand next to Goku. Neither of them exchanged a glance—Vegeta stared out at the stars beyond, watching as the grey planet below them receded steadily in the distance. Vegeta grimaced at the sight.

“It will be a pleasure to never look at that world again,” Vegeta said as he leaned against the glass, crossing his arms over his chest.

In the corner of Vegeta’s eye, he could see a wistful smile on Goku’s lips.

“We never did name it,” Goku said.

“ _Name_ it?” Vegeta said, raising an eyebrow. “Forget naming it—before I set the ship’s course, I briefly considered going back out there and _destroying_ it.”

Goku nodded. “But you didn’t.”

Vegeta narrowed his eyes into a glare, feeling more satisfied with each passing moment that took them further and further away from the dead world below them

“No,” he agreed. “Even a single ki-blast would have been too much energy to waste on that miserable fucking rock.”

Goku finally looked away from the glass, staring back at Vegeta. But still Vegeta refused to meet his gaze.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said. “And besides… I’m pretty sure your planet-destroying days are long behind you, eh?”

Vegeta felt his jaw clench, bristling at Goku’s words. Goku wasn’t the type to deal in veiled insults, but that came a hair too close for Vegeta’s comfort.

“Whatever,” he muttered, and turned abruptly to leave. “Enjoy your meditation, Kakarot.”

Vegeta was already beginning to climb down the stair-ladder to the deck below when Goku stood up, following at his heels.

“Vegeta, wait—”

“What?” Vegeta snapped, and looked up, finally willing himself to look into Goku’s face. Goku’s lips were drawn into a thin line, something between hurt and impatience shining in his eyes.

“Please, Vegeta.” Goku grabbed Vegeta’s wrist, stopping him as he tried to take another step down. “Why can’t you just stay with me here, for a minute?”

Vegeta pulled his arm away. “You’re welcome to join me on the gravity deck.”

“No,” Goku said, and the harsh edge of his voice was enough to get Vegeta’s attention. “Not today, Vegeta. With everything that’s happened, I’m just… I’m exhausted. I just want to rest—and just once, I’d like to spend time with you without having to fight you for it.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes. “Oh, spare me—”

“Fine!” Goku shouted as Vegeta began to descend the steps again. “Take off, then—run away like you did from the medbay.”

At that, Vegeta froze. He looked up at Goku, who immediately shrank away from the blistering glare that Vegeta leveled in his direction.

“Oh, fuck you, Kakarot,” Vegeta snarled. “I’m trying my best to get us help and get us back to Earth before you snap and get us both killed, and if you want to insult me for it, fine! Enjoy sulking up here in your stupid little meditation den.”

Goku’s mouth hung open at Vegeta’s outburst, too stunned to offer a comeback. Vegeta didn’t wait for one. By the time he hit the floor of the deck below, Vegeta was seething with rage, and already moving as quickly as he could toward the gravity deck.

 

 

* * *

 

 

That night, Vegeta struggled to find sleep.

His training on the gravity deck had left him less than satisfied—without functional training bots or an actual sparring partner, he’d been left with little else to do but shadowbox at five-hundred G, and it had hardly done anything to burn off the strange, frustrated energy that thrummed through his nerves. Anger wasn’t the right word for it—but neither was anxiety. It was a shapeless, buzzing unease that left him tossing in his bunk even though his eyelids felt heavy with exhaustion—a kind of restlessness that left his skin feeling hot and sticky even with the cabin’s optimized climate control.

More than once, he caught himself brushing at his lips with his fingertips.

Exasperated, he finally turned over and faced the cabin’s viewport, trying to pull his scattered thoughts together by focusing on the view beyond. But the warped streaks of blackness and starlight that bled through the glass merely left him feeling nauseated, so he forced his eyes closed again, opting to dwell on the distant hum of the ship’s engines instead.

The sound was almost hypnotic enough to bring him to the outskirts of sleep, but a sudden rapping at his cabin’s hatch pulled him abruptly back to complete consciousness.

“Vegeta?” Goku’s voice asked from the other side.

Vegeta resisted the impulse to melt the hatch with a blast of ki.

“What do you want?” he shouted back instead.

“...Can I come in?”

Vegeta dragged the palm of his hand down his face before turning over to face the bulkhead, away from the hatch. “Do whatever the fuck you want, Kakarot.”

Apparently that was all the invitation that Goku needed—Vegeta listened as the hatch slid open and Goku stepped inside.

“Listen,” Goku started, and though Vegeta couldn’t see him, he could hear Goku shifting uneasily on his feet before he hesitated to go on. “I’m—I’m sorry... about earlier. On the observation deck. I—I didn’t mean to be short with you, I just—”

“Oh, forget it, Kakarot,” Vegeta said, voice muffled as he buried his face into his pillow. “If you came in here to whine and—”

“Vegeta, please,” Goku interrupted, and the sharpness of his voice was enough to raise Vegeta’s eyebrow. “I’m actually trying to talk to you, here—will you at least turn around and look at me?”

Vegeta let out a sigh before he did as requested, turning over in his bunk to face Goku.

“Better?”

Goku gave a short nod, but even in the darkness of the cabin, Vegeta could see how Goku clenched his jaw, his entire frame held tight and defensive. Goku was clad in just his sleep wear—a pair of loose-fitting pants, and nothing else—and Vegeta thought he looked strangely vulnerable without his usual gi.

“I don’t know if I’m just not good at reading your signals,” Goku went on. “But when you left the medbay—”

“Kakarot,” Vegeta said, closing his eyes and rubbing at his brow with his fingertips. “It’s the middle of the night. Is this really what’s keeping you up right now?”

Vegeta watched as Goku flushed under his gaze, the redness creeping up his neck and spreading across his face.

“Can I sit down?” he asked, swallowing as he looked away from Vegeta.

The remnants of Vegeta’s earlier mood still tugged at him, and he felt a cruel impulse to refuse him—to tell Goku to fuck off and get out of his quarters immediately.

But Goku looked as exhausted and worn down as Vegeta felt, and Vegeta felt something like empathy swell in his chest.

Vegeta shrugged. “If you wish.”

Goku hesitated, but then finally moved across the few steps that remained between him and the bunk, and took a seat at the edge of the mattress.

“A lot of things are keeping me up right now,” he admitted after a long silence.

“Such as?” Vegeta prompted.

Vegeta watched as Goku nervously rubbed his hands together in his lap.

“Well, to be honest with you,” Goku said, hesitating at every word. “I can’t fall asleep because—well, I'm afraid to.”

“Afraid?”

“I’m afraid I’ll… dream again,“ Goku explained. "And that when I wake up, I won’t be myself again.”

“It’s a possibility,” Vegeta conceded. “But what are you going to do? Stay awake until we get to Earth? Hardly practical, Kakarot.”

“Then knock me out,” Goku said. “Take me to the medbay and keep me hooked up to sedatives until we get back. Wouldn’t that be safer?”

Vegeta balked at the suggestion. At the beginning of their journey, Vegeta might have taken him up on the offer—putting Goku into a coma and stuffing him into the medbay certainly would have guaranteed some peace and quiet, if nothing else. But now, the thought of spending days in the dark confines of the ship by himself, travelling through a hostile and unforgiving universe alone, without Goku—

“It won’t work,” Vegeta protested a little too eagerly. “I sedated you the first night we came back to the ship. The dose I gave you should have knocked you out for at least day—you came out of it in just a couple hours, remember? You overcame it like it was nothing.”

Goku looked away, disappointed.

“I… I guess you’re right.”

Vegeta watched as Goku shifted where he sat, like he couldn’t make himself comfortable on the edge of the bunk.

“What is it, Kakarot?” Vegeta sighed. “It’s painfully obvious you have something else to say.”

“Can I stay here?” Goku blurted.

Vegeta blinked. “What?”

“Can I stay here—for the night,” Goku asked in a rush, a creeping redness beginning to spread across his face once again.

Vegeta mouthed wordlessly for a moment before finally managing, “Well, I—”

“I—I think I would feel better if I could stay,” Goku said, stumbling over his words as he reached behind his head to rub at his neck. “The longer I lie awake in my bed, the more I can’t stop thinking about things, and it’s—Kami, don’t you ever feel so lonely and cooped up in these rooms? It would feel—I’d feel so much less alone if I could… If I could…”

“Kakarot—”

“You know what, forget it,” Goku muttered, shaking his head as he moved to stand up. “I’m being foolish, I’m sorry—I’m sorry if I woke you up, I’ll let you go back to sleep—”

“ _Kakarot_.”

Goku stopped halfway across the cabin, and turned back to look at Vegeta. Vegeta hesitated for a moment—the last thing his hot, cramped room needed was another warm body, but—

“I can’t sleep, either,” Vegeta admitted before abruptly flipping down the sheets on his bed, offering up a side of the bunk to Goku.

Goku looked at Vegeta for a long moment, wide eyes blinking in the darkness.

“Well, come on, then,” Vegeta said, gesturing at the empty side of the bed with a sweep of his hand.

Goku finally unfroze, and moved back towards the bed before slowly, tentatively crawling in.

There was only so much space in the bunk, and Vegeta could immediately feel the warmth radiating off Goku’s body as he crawled beneath the sheets. Goku turned onto his side to face Vegeta, and Vegeta felt Goku’s legs brushing against his own, skin against skin, and Vegeta suddenly felt his breath catching in his throat.

Goku’s eyes met his own, and Vegeta was surprised by the strange intensity he saw burning there.

“Why can’t _you_ sleep?” Goku asked.

Vegeta looked away, Goku’s gaze too overwhelming to look into, like trying to stare into the sun. He felt his eyes drawn helplessly to Goku’s lips instead .

“Space insomnia,” Vegeta deflected with a half-lie. “I’ve always found it hard to sleep onboard ships.”

“How so?” Goku asked, moving close enough that Vegeta could feel Goku’s breath against his skin when he spoke, and Vegeta’s pulse quickened until it reached a heady thrum in his chest.

Vegeta took a steadying breath before he could continue.

“It’s everything,” he murmured. “The constant drone of the engines, the total darkness that completely obliterates any hope of a normal circadian rhythm, the feeling of being caged and trapped—the knowledge that just a few feet of hull is the only thing separating you from an infinite ocean of vacuum. Does none of that ever bother you?”

Goku chuckled, and the sound of it was impossibly soft and light in the darkness of Vegeta’s cabin.

“I’d never really thought about any of that, to be honest.”

Vegeta shook his head and snorted. “Well, no one’s ever accused you of being a deep thinker.”

Goku’s mouth fell open in mock offense before he gave a short jab at Vegeta’s shoulder. “And no one’s ever accused you of being anything but a rude jerk.”

“Maybe so,” Vegeta said from behind a smirk. “Didn’t stop you from finding your way to my bed, did it?”

Goku made no attempt to counter him, and merely smiled before closing his eyes and shifting closer to Vegeta. Vegeta was nearly backed into the bulkhead, Goku’s body so close to his that their bare chests were almost flush with each other. Vegeta envied how peaceful Goku looked—how the tension had released from his muscles, how his chest rose and fell in a slow, even rhythm. It was a sharp contrast from how Vegeta felt—it was only by some miracle that Goku couldn’t hear Vegeta’s own heart thundering in the silence between them.

Vegeta started to shift in the bed, trying to turn over so he could face the bulkhead instead, but Goku’s voice stilled him.

“Vegeta?”

Vegeta swallowed, and turned back to face Goku, whose eyes had opened again, half-lidded in the darkness.

“Yes?”

Goku bit his bottom lip, hesitating.

“When we were in the medbay—” he started.

“Kakarot, please,” Vegeta said softly, resisting the urge to cover Goku’s mouth with his hand—anything to stop him, afraid that the clumsiness of his words would be enough to pull apart the delicate thread that hung in the silence between them.

“No,” Goku pushed back. “Please, Vegeta. I’m used to you putting up walls—I get it, it’s what you do. But this trip—as awful as it’s been—you know what the only good part of it’s been?”

Vegeta opened his mouth to counter him, but Goku’s words were coming out in a sudden, stumbling torrent.

“It’s been… you,” he breathed, and Vegeta’s eyes widened as Goku’s hand felt out for his own, fingers twining around his, and Vegeta nearly flinched at the unexpected touch. “For once, I can feel you _letting me in_. I’ve spent all these years wishing you didn’t hate me—wishing you could at least tolerate me, and for once… it actually seemed like you did. And when you let me… when you let me kiss you in the medbay, I—Kami, Vegeta, it’s more than I could have ever hoped.” Goku squeezed his eyes shut, and Vegeta swallowed against the ache that climbed up from his chest and into his throat. “And then as soon as it happened… it felt like you had pulled away again.”

“Kakarot—” Vegeta whispered, pulling his hand away from Goku’s to cup Goku’s face.

“Please,” Goku whispered, his hand reaching up to cover Vegeta’s where it brushed against his cheek. His eyes were shining in the dark. “Please—just be honest with me, Vegeta.”

“I am,” Vegeta said before pressing a hard kiss to Goku’s lips.

Goku let out a strangled sound of surprise as his hands reached immediately for Vegeta’s neck, moving until his fingers sank into Vegeta’s hair. Vegeta had thought that the feeling of Goku’s mouth against his own would be enough to soothe the persistent ache that had been building in his chest, but he was wrong—the ache only burned deeper, and Vegeta kissed Goku harder, urging his way past Goku’s lips until their tongues met, earning a stifled moan from Goku.

The sound filled Vegeta with a need that bordered on desperation, and before he could stop himself, Vegeta rolled over onto Goku, forcing Goku’s back into the bed.

“Vegeta,” Goku gasped against Vegeta’s lips, pulling his mouth away long enough to catch his breath.

Vegeta could feel Goku’s chest heaving against his own, and he relished the feeling of Goku’s skin, bare and hot against his own—he wanted to run his hands down the length of Goku’s body, feel every inch of him, and he found himself nearly shivering at the thought.

He kissed Goku again, softer this time.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away just far enough that his breath ghosted across Goku’s lips.

Goku’s eyebrows knit together as he brushed a hand through the coarse spikes of Vegeta’s hair. “Sorry…? For what?”

Vegeta clenched his jaw, struggling to find the words that could make some sense of what he meant—that could even begin to apologize for all he had done, and face the reality he had been avoiding for so long.

Once, he had thought he hated Goku. Maybe at one point he really had. And all these years, he had treated Goku accordingly—mocking him, cursing him, treating him as a lower class in a caste system that existed nowhere outside of Vegeta’s head.

But the years and battles between them had worked slowly to dissolve Vegeta’s antagonism toward his rival, and now Vegeta was forced to confront the truth: what lay between them was not the same shape as hatred, and ran far deeper than any obsession. It had been forged the day they had first faced off in a barren, crumbling Earthling wasteland, and had since bound them across time and space and even death. It would have been easy to say that the Fusion had sealed it, that the crude melding of soul and mind and body was what had finally crystallized the link between them, but the truth was they had been promised to each other long before that.

Vegeta’s chest swelled with a want that he had been denying himself for years.

“For… for treating you as I have,” Vegeta finally struggled to whisper, each word paining him to say. “Kakarot, I—”

But Vegeta stopped himself. Words failed him, whatever he meant to say falling miserably short in his throat. But Goku saved him the trouble—in an instant, he pulled Vegeta’s face closer, and crushed Vegeta’s lips to his own.

Vegeta relinquished himself to Goku’s lips immediately, pressing their bodies as close as he could manage as he drank in the taste of Goku’s mouth. He could feel the pulse of Goku’s heartbeat through his skin, the prickling heat of Goku’s ki as it brushed against the edges of his nerves, and the effect on Vegeta was dizzying.

He ground his hips against Goku’s, surprised at the hardness he already felt there. Goku pulled his lips away, gasping, arms wrapping tightly around Vegeta’s body until his hands clawed into Vegeta’s back.

“Vegeta,” Goku said, gasping again, his voice climbing higher as Vegeta ground into him again, harder this time.

Vegeta was panting against the crook of Goku’s neck, his mouth teasing and nipping at the skin there until it earned a soft hiss from Goku.

Goku’s spine arched beneath him, meeting Vegeta’s hips with his own, and the keening sound that spilled from his throat bordered on rapturous.

“Kami,” Goku uttered, his voice half-moan, half-prayer, and Vegeta was powerless to deny his pleading.

Vegeta slipped his hand beneath Goku’s waistband, his fingers curling around the hardness waiting there for him. Goku cried out before his lips found Vegeta’s again, his moans drowned against Vegeta’s mouth as Vegeta began to stroke him, slow and hard underneath the material.

Even with Vegeta’s mouth muffling him, Goku’s moaning became more insistent, and Vegeta sped his pace, stroking him faster and harder until Goku’s mouth broke away with a strangled cry, his hand suddenly wrapping around Vegeta’s wrist, halting him mid-stroke.

“Vegeta,” he choked. “S-stop.”

Vegeta narrowed his eyebrows, suddenly fearful that he had crossed some boundary. “I—I’m sorry, do you want—”

Goku’s words came in short, ragged breaths. “No, it’s just—I’m close to—”

The redness that spread across Goku’s cheeks said all it needed to.

Vegeta uncurled his fist from around him, and brought his other hand to Goku’s face, pushing aside the sweaty spikes of hair that fell into Goku’s eyes. He leaned forward, lips brushing at the shell of Goku’s ear.

“You don’t have to hold yourself back,” Vegeta whispered before flicking his tongue across Goku’s earlobe, causing Goku’s body to shudder hard beneath Vegeta’s.

Before Goku could stop shaking, Vegeta had slickened two fingers with his own mouth, and slid his hand back beneath Goku’s waistband. Slowly, he began to push one finger inside, and Goku’s reaction was instantaneous—his arms wrapped suddenly around Vegeta’s body again, hands digging into Vegeta’s shoulders as he moaned into Vegeta’s ear. Vegeta pulled in and and out of him with an agonizing slowness, and Goku bucked insistently against Vegeta’s hand. Vegeta rewarded him by sliding in a second digit, and went to work carefully, slowly opening Goku up.

Goku gripped Vegeta tighter, each movement of Vegeta’s hand forcing another, higher moan from his throat. At one point, he leaned forward to try to kiss Vegeta, but Vegeta shifted away before Goku could find his lips and he kissed at Goku’s throat instead—the noises Goku was making were exquisite, and Vegeta couldn’t bear to silence them with his own mouth. He continued to work Goku open, Goku’s cries edging higher with each movement until Vegeta was certain that half the galaxy must be able to hear him by now.

It made Vegeta ache for him even harder than before—soon he found himself throbbing at the sound of Goku coming undone beneath him.

He couldn’t resist anymore. Vegeta pulled away, and Goku hissed at the sudden loss. But Vegeta was pulling at Goku’s waistband, dragging his pants off as quickly as he could manage, and followed by pulling his own shorts off, kicking them aside along with the bed-sheets. Then he was upon Goku’s body again, this time kneeing Goku’s legs apart. He used one hand to steady his length between Goku’s legs, rubbing against him, teasing, then pushing—

Goku cried out as Vegeta began to breach him.

“ _Vegeta_ ,” he cried, his nails suddenly clawing hot welts into Vegeta’s back.

Vegeta hissed in pleasure at the stinging pain, but hesitated before he pushed further—he glanced furtively to Goku’s face, searching for any sign that he should stop.

But Goku’s eyes gleamed in the dark as he whispered a pained, desperate, “ _Please_.”

The single word carried more weight than a wish to the Dragon—Vegeta could hardly believe so much want could be contained in one syllable. And Vegeta had no intention of denying Goku’s desire.

Slowly, breathlessly—Vegeta slid inside.

“Kakarot,” he panted, his heart feeling like it was about to burst from his chest as he rocked into Goku, filling him until Goku was almost weeping Vegeta’s name.

Vegeta crushed their bodies so close together that barely the breadth of an atom remained between them, and Vegeta felt Goku’s legs wrap around his waist, as if to draw him in still closer. Goku’s mouth brushed against Vegeta’s lips, and this time he relented to Goku’s kiss, feeling each of Goku’s moans against his mouth as he angled deeper into Goku’s body.

Goku’s arms wrapped around him tighter with each thrust of Vegeta's hips, Vegeta's pace still slow, but harder each time he moved. Goku’s nails clawed impatiently at Vegeta’s back before he pulled his lips away.

“V-Vegeta,” he pleaded, stammering with each thrust. “M-more, please—”

Vegeta couldn’t resist another groan as he quickened his pace, his chest aching every time his name spilled again from Goku’s lips. Gods, Goku looked so beautiful beneath him—his skin glowed with a dewy sheen of sweat, his eyes squeezed shut in a euphoria that bordered on anguish. Vegeta kissed at his neck, lips and teeth scraping at Goku’s skin, afraid he wouldn’t be able to last much longer—

But judging by the sound of Goku’s voice, he wasn’t going to last, either.

“Vegeta,” he cried, his voice suddenly higher, sharper than before. “Vegeta, I lo—”

But Vegeta’s mouth devoured his, and Goku’s words were smothered like embers under Vegeta’s lips. In the next moment Goku’s cries spiralled into sharp whimpers as he reached climax, spurting against his stomach, bucking against Vegeta’s body as his walls tightened and clenched around Vegeta’s length. Vegeta buried his face against Goku’s neck with a sharp gasp, unable to stop himself from thrusting into Goku as deeply as his body would allow, and he failed to silence himself when he finally came, harder and deeper than he had anticipated.

For a long while, it felt like the universe had dissolved to nothing, leaving nothing but him and Goku and behind. He could hear and feel nothing but his own ragged breathing, almost in sync with Goku’s own heaving gasps. Goku remained wrapped around him, shuddering, his heartbeat narrowly outpacing the thundering in Vegeta’s own chest. Vegeta squeezed his eyes shut as he slumped against Goku, phosphenes dancing across his eyelids like pinpoint supernovae.

“Vegeta,” Goku rasped, his fingers slowly loosening until they no longer dug into Vegeta’s back. It was several more moments before Vegeta finally rolled off of him, sinking back into the bunk.

But Goku was immediately pressed up to his side, wrapping an arm around Vegeta’s stomach and pulling him close. Despite the heat and sweat clinging to Vegeta’s skin, he didn’t pull away.

They laid like that for what felt like an eternity, two souls wrapped around each other, oblivious to the wide universe rushing past them as their ship sped through the folds of spacetime. All that mattered to Vegeta was the feeling of Goku pressing a soft kiss to the base of his throat, and it was the last thing Vegeta felt before drifting into the calmest sleep he’d had since leaving Earth.


	9. Episome

_It was the first purge in months that had left Vegeta feeling satisfied._

_He couldn’t stand the missions where his skills were wasted on nearly defenseless worlds—too often he was sent on purges that felt more like crushing insects beneath his boot than actual combat. Wholesale slaughter did little to sate his Saiyan bloodlust—there was simply no honor in battle if your opponent refused to put up a decent fight._

_But Alyquii, as far as planets under siege went, had_ **_certainly_ ** _put up a fight._

_Vegeta’s armor was cracked and dented and scorched, his battlesuit a patchwork of tears beneath it. Blood stained his skin, dripping and crusting in equal measure, and he had no idea how much of it was even his. Sparks and ash fell around him like snow as the city around him burned to embers, bodies of Alyquiians and his fellow soldiers littering the narrow streets. Somewhere, beneath the haze of adrenaline still surging through his veins, pain pulsed through his nerves, but it would be awhile yet before he even began to feel it._

_His ears were still ringing when he heard a voice come through his scouter._

_“Vegeta, I’ve fallen back with Raditz—” Nappa’s voice. “—I’ve secured a shelter, I’m sending the coordinates now, but Raditz isn’t doing so hot—I think we’re gonna have to call for a medevac pod—”_

_“He’s lucky he isn’t dead after the stunts he pulled,” Vegeta snarled across the channel. “Fortunately for the both of you, this quadrant’s been successfully cleared. Start setting up camp and keep watch until we get further instructions from mission command.”_

_“Copy that—”_

_But Vegeta had already switched off the channel, uninterested in whatever else Nappa had to say._

_He tapped again at his scouter, skimming the update feed. At least a third of his battalion had gone radio silent, presumed dead at this point. But their losses meant little—their ambush had paid off. The most important military stronghold on the planet had been reduced to rubble, strewn with corpses that had once been this world’s most powerful fighters._

_Vegeta glanced down at the soldier at his feet—it was the last warrior Vegeta had successfully killed as the final waves of battle had wound down. It looked up at Vegeta with dead, glossy eyes that stared up from red, blood-streaked fur, beaked mouth hanging open in tortured rictus, its neck bent at a gruesome angle._

_The creature looked alien enough, but death had a habit of looking the same everywhere._

_Distantly, Vegeta could feel his stomach gurgling as he surveyed the creature beneath his boot. According to his scouter’s preliminary scans, the Alyquiians had similar enough biochemistry to his own. He couldn’t help but salivate as he bent down and lifted the soldier by the collar of its armor—tonight, Vegeta would have the chance to dine on something fresher than anything his bland military rations had to offer._

_Vegeta dragged the soldier’s body alongside of him as he began to move in the direction of the coordinates Nappa had given him. Text and images scrolled across his scouter, bright lines of light overlaid on the fire and ash that stretched out in every direction around him. New orders were already filtering through from mission command: regroup. Hold down conquered territory. Await orders to start the Second Wave. Blips dotted the map superimposed on his scouter—new targets, undefeated bases to lay siege to. Vegeta nearly shivered in anticipation._

_In a few hours, the hunt would begin anew._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Vegeta jolted suddenly from his sleep, emerging from his nightmare with a shaking, gasping breath.

But the dream was different than his usual nightmares—this time, he had felt his way through a vision that hadn’t belonged to him. And unlike his usual nightmares, which left him feeling sick, like a cold, sucking void had taken shape in his chest, this one had left his pulse racing with a terror that cut down to his most instinctual, deep-rooted fears.

He had been injured—his body broken and bruised, his back sinking against the wet sand of a warm beach. Gohan had been screaming—a desperate, keening wail that hurt worse than any physical injury. But he was powerless, helpless to do anything but lie there in panic, because _this monster had Gohan, he was taking him, he was going to_ take _him, he was going to_ hurt _him._

The secondhand terror of Goku’s nightmare left Vegeta feeling shaken, and he reached across his bed almost reflexively, searching out the warmth of Goku’s body—for comfort, to ground himself in reality, he wasn’t sure—

The bed was empty.

Vegeta sat up abruptly, his heart feeling like it had stopped in its chest. Goku was gone, and Vegeta didn’t have to reach out to feel his ki moving far below him, in the gravity deck. Vegeta nearly tripped in his rush to get out of his bunk, and he began to rummage frantically in his storage compartment for a battlesuit to wear. A feeling of nausea rose in his throat, and he couldn’t shake the thoughts that raced through his mind—some small, idiotic part of himself hoped that he was overreacting, that everything was fine, but Vegeta wasn’t one to indulge in self-delusions: he knew that if he had dreamed Goku’s memories, then Goku had done the same with his.

And after last night, the thought of Goku _changing_ again—

Vegeta’s hands shook as he pulled his armor on.

  


* * *

 

 

Vegeta felt like a coward as he stood in front of the gravity deck’s doors.

Vegeta _knew_ Goku could sense him waiting outside—just as clearly as Vegeta could feel Goku’s ki moving on the other side of the bulkhead—but he didn’t come out to greet Vegeta. He didn’t even bother to hail Vegeta through the ship’s internal comm system.

Vegeta felt like he was being taunted, or worse, lured—like Goku was using himself as bait to draw Vegeta into a corner.

And Vegeta was foolishly rising to it.

“Cap4, open the gravity deck doors,” Vegeta finally managed to command, and he felt his fists clenching and un-clenching at his sides as the thick, reinforced doors slid open. He held his breath before stepping inside.

The gravity had been reduced to zero the moment Vegeta had ordered the doors to open, but the room remained bathed in dim, red light. Vegeta could immediately see Goku standing near the main console in the center of the room, but his back was facing Vegeta. For a brief moment, Vegeta grasped to the desperate hope that everything was fine, that Goku was normal, that this was _his_ Goku—

But then Goku turned around, and Vegeta knew for certain.

It was Goku’s face, of course, but somehow the features had become all, subtly _wrong_ —like Vegeta wasn’t staring at Goku at all, but rather some uncanny mask of Goku’s face. His eyes had taken on a strange, unblinking darkness, and the murky red light cast his skin in a sickening, demonic glow.

“Cap4, close gravity deck doors,” Goku spoke, his gaze never faltering from Vegeta’s.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Vegeta hissed.

“Too bad,” Goku hummed, finally turning away from Vegeta to the gravity console. He tapped out a command into its keypad and suddenly, the floor was pulling down with a harsh three-hundred G. “And here I had hoped you’d want to get even for that whole airlock episode.”

“I’m not falling for your bait,” Vegeta snarled, though every part of him wanted to tear the limbs from the hideous impostor standing before him. “I want to speak to Kakarot.”

Goku shook his head, a pitying smile spreading across lips.

“I can’t believe you’re still not getting it, Vegeta,” Goku said, clicking his tongue. He stepped away from the room’s central column, and began to approach Vegeta, moving toward him in a slow, predatory circle. “You know, I had a _lovely_ dream last night—”

 _Don’t you fucking dare talk to me about last night_ , Vegeta wanted to scream at him, absolutely sick that the smirking monster before him even dared to inhabit the same flesh as Goku—the same skin that Vegeta had felt and tasted and savored just hours before.

“I don’t care,” Vegeta said, turning to match Goku’s movements, refusing to show his back to him. “I don’t care what horror show of a memory you fucking saw, _I don’t care_ . I’m not playing any more of these _games_ with you.”

“I can’t blame you,” Goku laughed, but the sound of it was harsh and mocking. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Sparring, on this silly gravity deck—a _game_ . It’s child’s play, in a cramped, little play-pen—oh, what I would give for a taste of _real_ combat.”

Vegeta’s jaw clenched. “If you want a real fight, I can certainly arrange that for you.”

Goku laughed again, and Vegeta cringed at the cold, metallic sound of it.

“Oh, I doubt you could give me a proper fight,” Goku taunted, his face nearly in Vegeta’s now as he moved in closer. “I can’t believe all this time you weren’t even trying to defeat me—not really. Apparently, all you really wanted to do was _fuck_ me—”

Vegeta’s arm snapped out at a speed too fast to see, and he closed a fist around Goku’s neck, squeezing until a gurgling noise was forced from Goku’s throat.

“Not another fucking word out of you,” Vegeta hissed.

“Yes, that’s good,” Goku rasped, his eyes shining with a malicious glee as Vegeta made every effort to crush his trachea. “ _I like it rough_.”

Vegeta let go, swinging a fist at Goku’s head before he could think better of it. His punch slammed into Goku’s temple, and Goku’s body was went sprawling across the tiled floor.

For a long moment, Goku didn’t move or speak. Vegeta tried to reign in his rage, his breath shaking, his entire body trembling with it as he approached Goku’s prone form. He thought Goku might have been unconscious—but then a muffled groan escaped his lips.

Vegeta leaned over him, fists still clenched and ready to defend himself if needed. “Kakarot?”

Vegeta watched Goku’s eyelids flutter open, and suddenly the entire topography of Goku’s features had shifted again, and Vegeta felt a warm flood of relief—even before Goku spoke, he knew he had the real Goku back again.

“Vegeta?” he said, voice creaking as he tried to push himself to his hands and knees, but he fumbled in the high gravity.

Vegeta bent down, offering a hand to him. “I… I’m sorry I had to hit you so hard. But... it seems to have knocked the sense back into you.”

Goku hesitated before taking Vegeta’s hand and pulling himself up.

“I… I can’t believe this is happening again,” he said weakly, rubbing at his injured temple as he avoided Vegeta’s gaze.

“I know,” Vegeta muttered, and stopped himself from saying out loud what he feared the most: _this was only going to keep happening—and it could only get worse._

But Vegeta bit back on that particularly grim train of thought, and prayed silently to whatever gods might be listening that the samples had reached Bulma by now.

“Vegeta,” Goku whispered as he leaned against Vegeta’s side for support. “Can we turn the gravity generator off? I—I really don’t want to be in here.”

Vegeta nodded before giving the command. “Cap4, return gravity to one G,” he ordered, and Vegeta felt the intense weight lift immediately from his shoulders.

Freed from the harsh pull of the gravity, Goku turned away, moving to leave, but Vegeta grabbed him by the wrist before he could.

“Kakarot, wait,” Vegeta said, and finally Goku turned to face him. A pained look strained his expression, as if he wanted nothing more than to find the darkest corner of the ship and hide in it.

But Vegeta pulled him closer.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta said, his hands finding their way to Goku’s chest, his fingers sinking into the folds of Goku’s gi. “Stay—stay with me here. We can have a proper spar. I know you’re not in the mood, but there’s no sense going off to sulk. At the very least, it won’t make you feel any worse.”

“I…” Goku began, gently grabbing Vegeta’s wrists, and Vegeta let go of his shirt. “I… guess you’re right.”

“I usually am,” Vegeta said, forcing a grin. “Come on. Let’s see if you can pay me back for that sucker punch.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Vegeta leaned against the metal tiling of the shower wall with one arm, closing his eyes as the water ran down chest and back. He always preferred to shower immediately after a spar—he relished the feeling of steam and hot water against his skin, unknotting his tense and aching muscles.

He stood like that in the shower’s stream for several long minutes, unmoving, savouring how the still-raw claw marks on his back stung under the hot water, like Goku’s nails were dragging down his skin all over again. Vegeta couldn’t help but lick his lips at the thought.

It was only the sound of approaching footsteps that finally dragged Vegeta back to reality.

Vegeta cracked open an eye and tilted his head to find Goku standing at the shower entrance. He was naked, save for the towel loosely held at his hips.

“Hey,” Goku said. “Mind if I join you?”

The shower was easily large enough to fit more than two people, and had a few water jets to choose from—while it was obvious that it had been designed for communal use, Goku had known better during their journey than to ever approach Vegeta while he was in it.

But their old habits hardly seemed to matter now.

“If you wish,” Vegeta said, turning away to grab a bottle of soap from the nearest shower ledge.

Vegeta squeezed out the contents of the bottle and began to lather up his hair, watching from the corner of his eye as Goku shed his towel and stepped in, moving to the the water jet closest to Vegeta. Goku let out a deep sigh as he turned his face up toward the water,  letting it run down his hair and skin.

“Thanks for the spar,” he eventually said, running his hands through his hair to soak it thoroughly.

“You’re welcome,” Vegeta murmured as he began to rinse his hair, hoping Goku didn’t notice the quick, furtive glances he kept making in Goku’s direction—he couldn’t help himself from looking, taking in the curves and ridges of Goku’s body in a way that he hadn’t been able to in the darkness of his cabin the night before.

“And… and thank you for bringing me back to my senses,” Goku added, and even underneath the sheen of water Vegeta could see Goku’s face reddening.

“I’ll try not to hit you so hard next time,” Vegeta snorted as he squeezed more soap into his palm, lathering it in his hands before rubbing it down his arms and across his torso. Goku offered him a small, sheepish grin.

“Here,” he said, and suddenly he was edging closer to Vegeta, moving behind him. “Let me help you with that.”

Vegeta felt Goku’s hands on his shoulders, and he stiffened reflexively at the sudden contact. Slowly, he felt Goku begin to massage his neck and back, spreading the soap across his skin. Vegeta quickly began to relax under Goku’s touch, his muscles unclenching beneath the gentle pressure of Goku’s fingers, even as the scratch-marks on his back began to sting from the contact.

Despite the heat of the water, Vegeta hissed as he felt a sudden shiver course through him.

“Wow, I really did a number on your back, didn’t I?” Goku said as he continued to slowly lather Vegeta’s skin, his mouth so close that Vegeta could feel his breath against the shell of his ear.

“Mmm,” Vegeta hummed, allowing himself the small pleasure of leaning into Goku’s hands. “Merely another addition to the gallery of scar tissue.”

Vegeta bit his lip as he felt Goku press a soft kiss to the base of his neck.

“If you take a senzu bean, they’ll heal right up,” he whispered against Vegeta’s wet skin.

“We’re not wasting a senzu on that,” Vegeta said, struggling to maintain an even tone as Goku’s arms slowly wrapped around Vegeta’s torso, his hands grazing the ridges of Vegeta’s abdomen. “Besides,” he said, turning around in Goku’s arms until they faced each other. “I don’t think I would mind those particular scars.”

Goku grinned before opening his mouth to reply, but Vegeta never gave him the chance—in one quick movement, he pulled Goku towards himself and pressed his lips to Goku’s mouth.

Vegeta allowed his hands to roam across Goku’s body as they kissed, Goku’s skin hot and wet against his own. A small noise of pleasure escaped Goku’s throat as Vegeta’s tongue teased its way past Goku’s lips, and Vegeta growled against his mouth as he tasted him. Goku didn’t resist as Vegeta suddenly pressed him against the shower wall, their chests flush with one another, their hands desperately groping at each other’s skin amidst clouds of hot steam.

Goku gasped as Vegeta nipped at his bottom lip before dragging hot kisses down Goku’s jaw and throat. The treatment earned a deep shudder from Goku’s body, and Vegeta felt his muscles weaken at the moan that spilled from Goku’s lips.

Gods, he was beautiful—Vegeta pulled back slightly to take in the sight of him, suddenly breathless at the depths of his want for him. And just beneath searing, unrelenting _need_ , Vegeta could feel a simmering fury clawing its way up his chest—he couldn’t stand the thought of anything taking this away from him, and he couldn’t begin to reconcile the man in his arms with the vile beast that had taken shape in the gravity room.

Vegeta crushed his lips against Goku’s again.

Goku’s hands roamed down Vegeta’s back again until his fingers pressed into the scar at the base of Vegeta’s spine. Vegeta hissed at the delicious pain that pulsed up his nerves, his body arching reflexively into Goku’s. But Vegeta could torment him back just as easily—smirking against Goku’s lips, Vegeta reached down and began to stroke the length of Goku’s obvious arousal.

Goku broke their kiss, his head falling back against the shower wall.

“Vegeta,” he groaned. “Kami, I—I’m still sore from last night—”

Vegeta chuckled, kissing Goku’s cheekbone where his skin had reddened again.

“I’m sure a senzu bean could heal that.”

Goku let out a deep laugh at that, and the sound of it left Vegeta’s chest aching. It was almost a shame to silence it by pulling him into another kiss.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Though the next few days passed uneventfully, Vegeta couldn’t shake the anxiety steadily building within himself.

Despite everything, he and Goku fell into an unexpected rhythm, hitting all the notes of a routine.  At night, they slept together—Vegeta should have felt surprised that he had so readily let Goku into his bed as he pleased, encroaching on any personal space he had left—but he wasn’t. In the morning, they ate together, fought together—though Vegeta was embarrassed by how quickly they had usurped the intended use of the gravity deck; more than once they had found each other pinned to the floor, hands tearing off clothing, mouths and bodies pressed together in something more desperate than combat.

In the time that stretched in between, Vegeta found himself visiting the medbay, as if he might find answers somewhere in the med terminal’s database. Goku started frequenting the observation deck more often, to meditate, as if he might find answers by turning inward.

Goku didn’t suffer another one of his episodes, but Vegeta still woke each morning in terror that he would.

On the third day, Vegeta made his way to the medbay again. Part of him accepted that he wasn’t likely to discover anything helpful, but it was a useful distraction—somethingto keep the gnawing fear at bay if only for a few hours. So he sat hunched in front the med terminal, scouring texts and treatment algorithms and the original readings from Goku’s biosensor, feeling like he was trying to put together a puzzle in the dark.

He nearly flinched in his seat when Cap4’s voice suddenly interrupted his chain of thought.

“ _All onboard personnel: ship’s water stores are approaching critical levels. An interruption in subspace travel will occur within the next five hours, Earth standard, for scheduled repletion. Please report to the bridge for more detailed navigational instruction._ ”

“Oh, the hell we are,” Vegeta said. “Cap4, abort scheduled repletion. We don’t have time for this—there’s plenty of emergency water stores in the cargo hold. Access those.”

“ _Negative, Vegeta. Those stores are under administrative lock for emergency purposes only_.”

Vegeta’s lip curled. He couldn’t help but marvel at how a shipboard AI had mastered such a condescending tone.

“Override administrative lock, then,” Vegeta spat.

“ _Negative. I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Vegeta._ ”

Vegeta leaned back in his seat, rubbing at his temple with his fingers. “You’re a real fucking piece of work, you know that?”

“ _Affirmative. I am currently the most cutting edge model in the Capsule Corp Quantum AI Series_.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to have some particularly scathing user-feedback to pass along if we ever get back to our fucking planet,” Vegeta snapped, and Cap4 offered no clever rebuttal. Vegeta made a noise of disgust as he stood up and swiped his hand across his terminal, the screen going dark beneath his fingertips.

He wasted no time in climbing down the stair-ladder to the deck below, and followed the corridor until he reached the bridge. There, he moved immediately toward the bridge’s main console, tapping at the touchscreens until they glowed to life. Ahead of him, on the main viewscreen, a stream of data unfurled describing Cap4’s pre-selected destination.

According to the ship’s telemetry, they were heading for a star system not unlike Earth’s own. Specifically, Cap4 had set its navigational sights on a large gas planet with an extensive ring system—a quick, easy source of ice water, if Vegeta had to guess. Vegeta let out a sigh as he tapped open a comm line directly to the observation deck—at least this wouldn’t have to be a long pit-stop.

“Kakarot?” Vegeta said.

“Hey, what’s up?” Goku answered through the channel.

“Did you hear Cap4’s bulletin earlier?”

“Yeah, not gonna lie, I was only half-listening—something about our water supply?”

“Yes,” Vegeta said, his voice dropping to a growl. “Cap4’s made the brilliant decision to interrupt our trip to make a stop to replenish our water stores. God knows what sort of asinine protocol it’s following but it won’t let me override it—I could go digging for the override codes, but it might just be faster to go along with it.”

“How long’s it gonna take?”

“Maybe a day,” Vegeta said, glancing down at the planetary data again. “Possibly less.”

“Well, whatever we gotta do, I guess. Thanks for the heads-up.”

Vegeta nodded and moved to terminate the conversation, but Goku piped up once more.

“Hey? Meet me in the galley later for dinner?”

Vegeta gave his head a slight shake. “Same time as always, Kakarot.”

  


 

* * *

 

  


All things considered, the planet they arrived at was far more pleasing to the eye than the one they had just left behind.

Vegeta glanced at the video-feed on the bridge’s main display, the screen almost entirely filled with the gas-giant and its rings, some of its moons scattered in the distance. Its atmosphere was a turbulent blue-green, and from where the ship orbited just above the ring plane, it was close enough that Vegeta could see lightning flickering through the bands of clouds. Vegeta found himself transfixed for several long moments as he took in the sight of it, feeling like he was watching a storm pass across an impossibly large sea.

In a separate view screen, Vegeta saw the retrieval drones unfurling from their capsules and exiting the cargo hold airlock like a swarm of metallic insects. The ring system was even more massive than Cap4’s initial estimates, and most of it was made of ice, in chunks the size of boulders and mountains and everything in between. The drones had plenty to feed on—despite his annoyance at the stopover, Vegeta felt confident that they would be able to work quickly.

In the meantime, he had other things to follow up on.

He looked down to face the bridge’s main terminal and keyed in his credentials to activate the ship’s comm array.

_Initiating commlink. Waiting for Earth to accept connection._

Vegeta drummed his fingers along the surface of the console as he watched the Capsule Corp. logo rotate on the screen. It was a few minutes before the animation finally vanished and was replaced by Bulma’s face.

“Hey, sorry for the wait,” she immediately apologized, running a hand through strands of dishevelled blue hair. “I’m kind of run off my feet here—it’s been a nonstop shitshow here for the past couple days.”

Vegeta nodded. “I take it you received the samples, then?”

“Yeah.” Bulma leaned back in her seat, giving her head a slow shake.“God, Vegeta—what did you _send_ to me?”

Vegeta rose an eyebrow. “Well, that’s what I was calling you to ask about.”

Bulma shook her head again and began to chew on her thumbnail—the kind of oral fixation Vegeta knew she resorted to when she was craving a nicotine fix.

“Look,” she said. “I’m not gonna lie, we still don’t have a damn clue what we’re really dealing with here. Nothing turned up in the blood samples you sent to me, but that black, tarry substance—we managed to isolate… _something_ from it, but—Jesus, Vegeta, no one’s seen anything like this before.”

Vegeta swallowed, trying to ignore the surge of anxiety that had begun to buzz at the fringes of his consciousness.

“If it’s a virus,” Bulma went on, “then it’s like nothing that’s ever existed on Earth. I don’t even think it’s natural—like, this is some seriously unreal nanotech we’re dealing with here. Half of my researchers are insisting I start filing patents for this stuff. The other half—well, they think I should destroy every sample and pretend we never saw _any_ of this.”

If it wasn’t of natural origin…  Vegeta thought back to the planet where the substance had come from, and the mysterious debris that had been left there—suddenly, he found himself dwelling again on the strange patterns of symbols he had seen. What if it had been a warning all along—some dead species’ equivalent of a biohazard symbol, marking some uncontained bioweapon, or failed experiment?

And now it was simmering in a lab on Earth.

“I don’t think destroying it would be a terrible idea,” he finally managed to say.

Bulma snorted. “Yeah, I agree,” she said. “I’m sorry, I wish I could tell you more at this point, but there’s not much else to go on. We’ve introduced the pathogen—whatever the fuck it is—to mouse models, and predictably, they’ve all died so far. From some kind of meningoencephalitis syndrome, with the same kind of symptoms you described to me. Lucky for you, I’m guessing your robust Saiyan constitution saved your ass.”

Vegeta narrowed his eyes. “Right. Have there been any… behavioral changes?”

Bulma shrugged. “Nothing statistically significant. At least, not yet—we’re still collecting data, obviously. Some of the autopsy results have been kind of weird, though.”

Vegeta raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Well, some of the subjects came from genetic lines with pre-conditioned neurological issues,” Bulma explained. “Brain cancers, cortical lesions, amyloid plaques, neural ablations, all sorts of things—but during autopsy, all of that’s just _gone_. Histology’s completely normal, as far as we can tell. Like the infection rewired their brains, and just… well, happened to kill them in the process, I guess.”

Vegeta stiffened in his seat.

“You’re… you’re saying this pathogen can actually reverse neurological damage?” he managed to ask with a throat that had gone suddenly dry.

“Yeah, looks that way. You can see why some of my researchers would be champing at the bit to file patents for this kind of thing—”

But Vegeta was barely listening to her words anymore, suddenly gripped by a chill that coursed through his veins.

“Listen, I have some things that need my attention here,” he interrupted. “Can you keep me updated if you discover anything else?”

“Well, that’s the plan.”

“Thank you,” said Vegeta before terminating the transmission.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Vegeta climbed onto the observation deck a few minutes later, he expected to find Goku meditating in the centre of the room.

Instead, he found him standing near the wall of glass, nose and palms pressed against it like an excitable child looking at a display of sweets.

“Have you looked at this, Vegeta?” he said, glancing over his shoulder the moment he sensed Vegeta stepping onto the deck. “I’ve never seen a planet this beautiful—we _have_ to name this one.”

A faint smile tugged at Vegeta’s lips before he could stop himself. “Any ideas?”

Goku laughed as he turned back to face the glass. “Super Saturn?”

Vegeta snorted and shook his head. “I should know better than to even ask you.”

He moved forward to stand next to Goku. Slowly, Vegeta lifted a hand to lay his gloved fingertips against the glass—it was impossible to deny that the planet and its ring system looked even more stunning here on the observation deck, in full panoramic view. They took in the sight of it together, silent for several long moments before Vegeta finally cleared his throat.

“Listen, I… I was just speaking with Bulma,” he said, feeling his throat tighten as he forced out the words.

Goku turned away from the glass to look at Vegeta, eyebrows raised, as if sensing the tenseness that suddenly gripped Vegeta.

“Oh?” he said. “What did she have to say?”

But Vegeta kept his gaze focused on the planet before them, suddenly struggling to meet Goku’s gaze.

“She got the samples we sent. She’s still investigating, but… she mentioned something.” Vegeta swallowed before continuing. “Kakarot… you suffered a head injury as a child, correct?”

“Yeah, I was just little when it happened,” Goku said, and pointed at his scalp. “I still have the scar, actually.”

Vegeta gave a stiff nod. “And it corrupted your Saiyan nature, completely wiped out your infant conditioning, and all traces of your original mission to Earth.”

In the corner of his eye, Vegeta watched Goku shift uncomfortably where he stood.

“Yeah, that’s my understanding.”

“I think…” Vegeta paused, finally looking directly into Goku’s eyes. “I think your exposure to the pathogen is reversing that brain injury.”

Goku’s mouth hung open for a moment, and he struggled to find a reply before Vegeta immediately interrupted him.

“Bulma said they’ve introduced the infection into lab mice,” Vegeta went on. “And they’ve seen something similar happen in them. And it would explain why this keeps happening to you, while leaving me seemingly unaffected.”

Neither said another word for a long time, nothing but the distant sound of the engines humming filling the heavy silence between them. When Goku finally spoke, his voice nearly cracked.

“I think you’re right.”

Vegeta opened his mouth to speak, but Goku went on.

“I mean, I know being Saiyan has always been a part of me, as much as I tried to forget that sometimes,” he admitted. “I know I’m not like anyone else on Earth. I’m not. Sometimes I really do feel like an alien, because I am, and I’m okay with that. I… I really am.” And then his voice dropped to something softer, quieter. “To be honest, Vegeta, I’m glad I learned so much from you about being a Saiyan. You’ve taught me a lot, whether you realize that or not.”

Vegeta felt a pang in his his chest, and he reached for Goku’s arm almost reflexively. “Kakarot—”

“And I guess I’ve always felt something much worse just beneath all that,” Goku went on. His eyes squeezed shut as he took a steadying breath. “But I can’t ignore it anymore. It’s like something dark has been living inside me all this time, something terrible, and now it’s like I’ve shone a light on it, and—it wants out. It wants out so badly. It won’t hide anymore and… and I’m powerless to stop it.”

Vegeta’s hand tugged at Goku’s arm, pulling him closer. “You’re _not_ powerless—”

“What are we gonna do, Vegeta?” Goku said, his voice finally breaking. “What if Bulma can’t find a way to reverse this? What if I never go back to normal?”

“I won’t let that happen,” Vegeta whispered, grabbing both of Goku’s arms and forcing Goku to meet his gaze. In the dim, blue light reflected from the planet beyond, he saw that Goku’s eyes were wet and shining  “I won’t let that happen to you,” Vegeta said again, harshly, his words not a promise, but more a challenge—a threat to the universe that if it _dared_ to take this away from him, there would be nothing he wouldn’t do to set things right

Soon, Vegeta could feel Goku shaking in his grip.

“I’m sorry,” Goku whispered. “I don’t mean to be like this, I just—”

But Vegeta said nothing, and merely pulled Goku into his arms in a tight embrace. Goku leaned into him without protest, immediately wrapping his arms around Vegeta’s torso and burying his face into Vegeta’s scalp. They stood like that for several moments, and Vegeta slowly raised an arm to stroke a hand through Goku’s hair, but he suddenly felt Goku stiffen, and then pull away slightly.

“H-hey,” he said, voice shaking as he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, pointing at the glass with his other. “What’s that?”

Vegeta loosened his grip on Goku and turned to face the window, his eyes following the direction Goku was pointing at.

“What?” Vegeta asked. “I don’t see anything—aside from the massive planet, obviously—”

“No, that—there’s something up there.”

It took a few moments for Vegeta’s eyes to resolve what Goku saw, but then—there it was. Something almost too small to see, glinting just enough to catch the eye, hanging above them in a high orbit.

“Good eye, Kakarot,” Vegeta muttered, squinting. “Probably an asteroid, or—”

But Goku was shaking his head. “No, it’s not moving right—”

And then Vegeta’s eyes saw it, too—suddenly, the object _moved_ , changing direction, gaining a velocity that was impossible for any sort of natural satellite.

Vegeta pulled away from Goku, his jaw clenching.

“It’s a ship.”


	10. Apoptosis

“So, it’s just as I thought,“ Vegeta said as he drummed his fingers along the bridge’s main console. "This entire planetary system’s a PTO hotspot.”  
  
Goku hung back near the entrance of the bridge, watching as Vegeta tapped in a series of commands into the terminal.  
  
“You’re sure?” he asked.  
  
Vegeta looked up at the screen in front of him, scrolling through a reel of high-res telescopic photos of multiple ships that Cap4 had spotted so far—not just the one that Vegeta and Goku had witnessed from the observation deck.  
  
“I’m certain,” Vegeta muttered. “The drive signatures are all standard PTO and the radio chatter I’ve managed to pick up on is all the usual code and dialects you’d expect. I’ve even figured out where their base is.”  
  
Vegeta tapped again at the terminal, and a false-colour diagram of the planet’s ring system suddenly glowed to life on the bridge’s central screen. One particular moon flared to life with a red, pulsing light.  
  
“There,” Vegeta continued. “Breathable atmosphere. Mild climate and gravity, active magnetosphere… And with an easy-to-mine, resource-rich ring system surrounding it—well, sticking a base there is a no-brainer. If Cap4 had given me the time to send out a preliminary probe, we never would have come here.”  
  
“But we did,” Goku said. “So what do we do now?”  
  
Vegeta chewed his lip. “We hide.”

Goku leaned against the bulkhead as he rubbed his upper arm. “I dunno, Vegeta—I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

“It’s easier than you think,” Vegeta said before pulling up a different map of the system and tapping on an icon of Capsule 4. “I’ve set us up to stay in orbit at the moon’s third libration point—hidden on the opposite side of the ring system. That puts us about four hundred thousand kilometers away from the areas of highest ship traffic.  As long as we keep our propulsion to a minimum and our comm array silent, no one’s ever going to find us unless they’re really looking. I’ve even scaled back the number of our retrieval drones out in the rings, just to be safe.”

Goku scratched the back of his neck. “I’ll pretend like I understood what any of that meant.”

Vegeta turned away from the bridge screens, looking to Goku with a small smirk. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

“Vegeta, I trust you more than I trust myself right now,” Goku said. “But what if someone _does_ find us?”

“You say that like I’ve never dealt with space pirates before,” Vegeta said, shaking his head. “Stop fretting, Kakarot—we’ve dealt with worse on this trip so far.”

“I guess you’re right,” Goku murmured. “Look, I’m gonna head to the galley. I can’t deal with this on an empty stomach.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes.

“Fine. I’ll join you in a minute.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Goku and Vegeta turned into bed for the night, nothing of note had happened. As Vegeta had predicted, no PTO ships noticed them—at this distance from the moon base, none of them even passed close. Vegeta had reassured Goku repeatedly that the drones would have their replenishing mission finished by morning, and then they were free to leave the system behind like they had never been there at all.

Goku had seemingly accepted Vegeta’s reassurances—it wasn’t long before he drifted off to sleep in Vegeta’s bunk, arms curled around Vegeta while snoring softly in his ear. Vegeta pushed aside his irritation at Goku’s annoying sleeping habits long enough to fall asleep shortly after.

It was only a few hours before morning when Vegeta suddenly jolted awake in his bunk.

It took him a few, bleary moments to figure out why. It hadn’t been a nightmare this time—his sleep had been mercifully dreamless, free of any unwanted visions from the slideshow of Goku’s memories. Some irrational part of him jumped immediately to the worst case scenario—maybe a ship had found them, and they were under attack, and Capsule 4 was being boarded. But the ship was quiet, silent except for the distant hum of the engines. Vegeta could sense nothing amiss.

In fact, he could sense nothing at all.

Goku’s arms around him were gone, the bed cold and empty without him—Vegeta’s first assumption was that Goku had gotten up to go to the ship’s head, or to the galley, but Vegeta didn’t feel his ki there. As Vegeta slowly roused to full consciousness, he realized he couldn’t feel Goku anywhere in the ship at all—not on the observation deck, not on the gravity deck, not even on the bridge or in the medbay—

Vegeta felt his mind lurch suddenly across thousands of miles of empty space—Goku had never been this far away from him before, not since they had fused, but the feeling was unmistakable.

There, across the impossibly wide divide between them—Vegeta could feel Goku’s ki.

Vegeta suddenly struggled to breathe as the air in his lungs crystallized to ice. He knew immediately where Goku was. The distance and direction could mean nothing else _—_ his ki was hovering in the exact spot of the moon they were trying to hide from, and Vegeta’s mind reeled at the implications. _Had something taken him?_

 _Had he gone there_ himself?

“Cap4,” Vegeta barked, his voice hoarse as he struggled not to choke on his own panic. “Kakarot—how did—how did he leave the ship?”

“ _T_ _he landing pod left the Capsule 4 cargo bay several hours ago_ ,” Cap4 answered.

“The...the landing pod?” Vegeta’s head was in his hands, his fingers pulling at the hair at his temples. “Kakarot was on it? No one else?”

“ _Affirmative_ ; _no macro-lifeforms aside from yourself and Son Goku have been present on Capsule 4 during its voyage._ "

Then Goku had left for the moon on his own. Vegeta couldn’t make sense of it, and he stumbled from his bunk, quickly pulling on a battlesuit and armor, his shaking hands fumbling with the clasps of his breastplate. He had to go him—he had to bring Goku back, no matter what sort of forces were waiting on the moon—but it just didn’t make any sense, why would he go there, _why would he go there—_

Vegeta bolted from his quarters and dropped down to the deck below as quickly as he could manage, running down the corridor until he reached the bridge. Once he was there, he tapped frantically at the main terminal, opening a communication channel with the landing pod. He felt some modicum of relief when he connected almost instantly with the pod’s transponder, light delay notwithstanding—the pod was still intact, then.  At the very least, Goku hadn’t been shot down.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta shouted across the channel. " _Kakarot!_ ”

The line merely crackled with static.

Vegeta slammed a fist against the console, cracking one of the touchscreens. There was no escaping the reality of the situation—he was going to have to leave the ship, and follow Goku into whatever nightmare of a situation he had gotten into.

Vegeta raced back into the corridor, dropping down into the lower decks of the ship. Once he reached the cargo hold, he moved rushed toward the row of escape pods lining the the bulkhead and immediately clambered into one, sealing the hatch behind him.

The escape pods bore a similar design to the pod Vegeta had originally ridden to Earth so many years ago—it was just as small and cramped, and with nothing but a single view-port to see outside. And though they were intended for emergencies, they could be used as rudimentary shuttles if the situation called for it—which was exactly what Vegeta intended to do. He didn’t hesitate before he keyed in the moon’s coordinates and slammed in the order to launch.

Vegeta felt a surge of nausea as the pod rocketed from the launch tube, rolling and spinning away from Capsule 4 before finally stabilizing into a smooth arc around the ringed planet. Once Vegeta’s vision stopped spinning around him, he took the pod’s controls, forcing it to accelerate until the weight bearing down on his chest made it almost painful to breathe. The gravity well of the ringed planet made it impossible to use anything but the conventional thrusters, and Vegeta pushed them to the brink; red lights flashed and alarms sounded as Vegeta challenge the pod’s tolerances, its acceleration soon approaching a brutal three-hundred G.

The trip couldn’t have lasted more than twenty minutes, but time stretched before Vegeta in an agonizing blur. He tried to hail Goku’s pod more times than he could count, each time receiving only dead air in response, shouting and slamming his fists against the hull with each failure to communicate.

Slowly, the moon became larger in the the view-port as Vegeta approached it, ballooning from a dim smudge to a disc that almost filled half the window. Its surface was a smear of green and brown and blue, obscured by swirls of gray and brown clouds; at first glance, it looked like a smaller, muddier earth. As Vegeta’s pod arced towards the moon, he could see a smattering of other space-ships and a few stations, but none of them seemed to pay him any mind—at this point, he was just another vessel blending in with space traffic.

On the final approach, Vegeta began to hear snatches of radio chatter.

" _Hey what’s going on at the Spiruv docks? They’re not giving anyone clearance to land—I’m not getting through to any of my crew down there—some sort of comm blackout?_ "

" _T_ _here’s_ _some kind of emergency down there, I don’t know… K’yi said they picked up on some sort of wide-beam broadcast a few orbits ago—orders for total evacuation of the base—but it’s been total radio silence since then._ "

The voices were speaking in Galactic Standard, as Vegeta expected, and he cranked the volume on his comm panel to hear them better. More voices began to join in, some more frantic than others.

" _The scouter network’s completely down. This is fucked._ "

" _Look,_ _they better clear us for landing soon, ’cause if I don’t get this molyb shipment down to Rotariq, that bastard’s gonna flay me alive—”_

" _I’m_ _getting weird reports here—the base was attacked? How is that—_ "

" _Attacked?_ _Not a chance—that’s the best defended base this side of the Tudorva Cluster._ "

" _Maybe_ _the Arcturyan Cult? Didn’t think they were active in this sector, but—_ "

"— _heard_ _it was a… a Saiyan? I don’t—_ "

" _Tarex_ , _you are so full of shit—a Saiyan, come on, really? I bet Frieza’s ghost is wandering around down there, too?_ "

Vegeta swallowed, an icy frisson jolting down the length of his spine. He pressed his hands to the viewport as he gazed down at the moon below, seeking out the point where Goku’s ki pulled the strongest—a coastal region, in the north of the moon’s largest continent.

Vegeta’s hand shook as he tapped into his comm panel.

“There _is_ a Saiyan down there, and he’s incredibly dangerous,” he barked into the transmitter, and the arguments from the nearby ships went suddenly silent.  “If any of you idiots value your lives, you’ll stay in orbit here, or you’ll get the hell out of this system completely.”

“. _..who the fuck was that?_ ”

“Someone you’d be wise to listen to,” Vegeta muttered before terminating the transmission. His hands glided across the pod’s controls, and the pod quickly began its descent toward the moon.

His pod slammed into the moon’s surface a few minutes later. Vegeta scrambled out of the damaged vessel the moment the hatch unsealed, and he moved quickly to climb over the lip of the impact crater his landing had made.

He wasn’t prepared for what he saw.

The base he had come to was a sprawling cluster of gleaming white domes and spires—or, it had been, but now lay half in ruin, buildings crumbling and burning from where blistering ki blasts had melted through them, the bodies of PTO soldiers strewn across the ground. Blood and ash coloured the landscape in equal measure, the dim sky obscured with thick smoke and falling embers.

Vegeta moved slowly through the carnage, his knees threatening to buckle with each step, forcing himself in the direction of Goku’s ki.

He passed through a crumbling hole in one of the buildings’ walls, finding himself in a wide, dimly-lit corridor. Loud sirens echoed between the walls, flashing lights reflecting off the metal interiors, disorienting Vegeta enough that he nearly tripped over the corpse of a dead soldier at his feet. Groups of bloodied, injured soldiers stumbled past Vegeta as they fled down the corridor, a few of them casting him wide-eyed looks of terror in his direction, clearly recognizing him as another Saiyan threat.

Vegeta paid them no attention, and continued to work his way slowly down the corridor. His body felt detached and weightless with each step, as if he were moving through a fever dream.

He finally turned a corner, the corridor opening suddenly into an expansive, domed room—-a hangar, judging by the scattered space-craft and equipment. Part of the ceiling had been blown out, along with most of the far wall, the metal twisted and melted into a ragged hole that opened up to the sky. The ringed planet loomed like a dim giant in the distance.

At the far end of the room, in the center of the worst of the wreckage, stood Goku.

No, _not_ Goku, Vegeta realized—beyond the most superficial details, the unrecognizable _thing_ before him bore no similarities with Goku at all. He had shunned his orange gi, instead wearing a set of Vegeta’s Saiyan armor over a torn and stained battlesuit. Blood was was smudged and crusted on his face, streaked with soot and ash, his white gloves wet and dripping with it. He glowed and crackled in his Super Saiyan state, his eyes chilling pinpoints of ice above a mouth contorted into a gleeful snarl. In his hands, the body of a soldier hung limply in his fingers, blood oozing from a hole ki-blasted through its torso.

Despite the moon’s low gravity, Vegeta felt like he was being sucked down, and it took all his strength not to collapse to his knees.

“Kakarot,” he whispered hoarsely.

Kakarot’s eyes shifted in Vegeta’s direction, his manic smile widening.

“I could sense you approaching,” he said, and he dropped the soldier in his hands, its body crumpling to the ground like a discarded doll. “I’m thrilled to see you’ve come to join in.”

Vegeta shook his head, fighting against the dizziness that set the world spinning around him. “You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I came to participate in this _slaughter_.”

“Tch,” Kakarot hissed. He lifted the back of his hand to wipe away the blood smeared across his mouth, and Vegeta felt ill just wondering where it had come from. “Too bad. You used to be _fun_ , Vegeta.”

Vegeta flinched at his words. “Whatever you’re hoping to accomplish with this senseless destruction—I promise you won’t find it. _Stop_ this, Kakarot—come with me back to the ship.”

“I don’t think so,” Kakarot laughed. “I just got out of that cage. And I’m not going back until I’ve had a chance to sharpen my claws properly.”

And before Vegeta could react, Kakarot spun to face him, firing a ki-blast in Vegeta’s direction. Vegeta only managed to dodge at the last moment, snarling as the blast grazed his cheek and singed his skin raw. He responded by ascending to his own Super Saiyan form, and lunged forward to meet Kakarot head-on.

They came together in a flurry of hits, taking to the air as their auras crackled around them. Vegeta could immediately feel the difference in Kakarot’s fighting style; it was distinctly hard and feral in a way that sparring with Goku never was. Fighting with Goku felt more like a dialogue, a sort of violent dance—but Kakarot’s sole intention was _pain._ Vegeta could sense with every blow that Kakarot wanted to _hurt_ him, and would stop at nothing until he did.

Thankfully, Vegeta was more than willing to match the bastard at that particular game.

Kakarot managed to block each of Vegeta’s blows, violent shock waves bursting from them each time they connected. The scattered onlookers on the ground ran screaming as the buildings below them crumbled beneath the onslaught. Vegeta roared as he managed a sudden uppercut into Kakarot’s jaw, Kakarot’s head snapping back from the force of it. Vegeta whirled upon him with a fist aimed for Kakarot’s stomach, but Kakarot regrouped faster than Vegeta anticipated—Vegeta felt his entire world shift sideways as Kakarot’s elbow slammed into his temple, and Vegeta stumbled mid-air, ears ringing from the blow. Kakarot saw his opening, and swung at the other side of Vegeta’s head with both fists, slamming Vegeta toward the ground.

Vegeta hit the ground with a force that shook the earth. It was several moments before he remembered how to breathe again, and he hissed in pain as he crawled out of the shallow crater his impact had left. Kakarot hovered downward in his direction, smirking as he crossed his arms over his breastplate.

“You should quit now, Vegeta, and save yourself the embarrassment,” Kakarot taunted.

“Fuck you,” Vegeta spat, wincing as broken ribs shifted beneath the material of his battlesuit.

Kakarot smirked. “Maybe later. In the meantime, it looks like we have company.”

Vegeta turned his head, looking in the direction of Kakarot’s gaze. Sure enough, a group of armored soldiers was flying toward them from the horizon, clearly a second-line of defense come to salvage what was left of the main base. Vegeta could only manage a weak shake of his head—if only the fools knew what they were up against.

Kakarot’s smirk widened across his lips as he raised a hand forward. Slowly, a pulsating sphere of energy began to glow from the surface of his palm.

“Kakarot, stop this!” Vegeta snarled, ignoring the pain wracking his body as he took flight again, slamming into Kakarot’s side with his full weight, knocking Kakarot’s hand away and deflecting the ki-blast toward the sky. Kakarot stumbled back from the impact, and Vegeta managed to land a hook across Kakarot’s face, his nose crunching under Vegeta’s fist.

Vegeta swung again, but Kakarot caught his fist, and then grabbed Vegeta’s throat with his other hand, crushing Vegeta’s neck as his mouth pulled back into a sneer of revulsion.

“All of this effort?” he hissed. “All of this, just to protect these… these lowly _grunts_?”

Vegeta’s hands scrabbled at Kakarot’s fist, trying to loosen the fingers squeezing his throat.

“It’s not about them, you idiot,” Vegeta spluttered, gasping for breath as Kakarot’s hand continued to tighten around his neck like a python. “I’m trying—to _help_ you—”

Kakarot narrowed his eyes, and for a moment, Vegeta saw a brief flicker of hesitation—a sudden crack in the monster’s shell. But it was enough—in a matter of seconds, Vegeta watched the features of his face contort and then soften, rearranging into something more familiar.

Suddenly, Goku’s fingers were trembling around Vegeta’s throat.

“Vegeta.” The word was barely audible, a strangled whisper caught in Goku’s throat. His hand fell limply away, and Vegeta could see his entire form shaking now. “Vegeta… what have… what have I…”

Goku’s eyes turned to glass, and for a moment it looked as if he were going to collapse and plummet to the ground below. But Vegeta grabbed him by the neck of his armor, giving him a harsh shake.

“We have to leave,” he said, casting a side-glance to the approaching horde. “Where is the landing pod?”

But Goku was somewhere else entirely, shaking his head back and forth as he trembled in Vegeta’s grip. “I can’t… Vegeta, I… I didn’t mean—”

“Kakarot!” Vegeta shouted, giving him another shake. “I need you to look at me! Where is the landing pod!”

Goku’s eyes finally came into focus to meet Vegeta’s, tears brimming at the edge of his eyes.

“I-it’s just outside… outside the hangar we just left,” he stuttered. “Vegeta, I—there were so many of them—I couldn’t have—”

“Don’t think about that right now,” Vegeta hissed. “I need you to focus on getting out of here.” He grabbed Goku’s arm and began pulling them both toward the ground just as the first line of soldiers began to close around them, ki-blasts coming from every direction. Vegeta deflected them easily enough as he raced toward the ground, Goku in tow, but if they managed to damage their pod—

He found the vessel just where Goku said it would be, half buried under flaming rubble, scorched from the flames. Vegeta cursed as he vaporized the debris with a burst of ki.

“Damn it, Kakarot,” he growled as he unsealed the hatch. “Would it have killed you to put it back in the capsule—”

“I—I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“Just fucking get in!” he shouted, and pushed Goku in as more ki blasts rained down around them.

Vegeta clambered in after Goku, slamming the hatch shut behind him. He didn’t even bother to strap in as he flipped on the engines and engaged the ki-shields, skipping through every pre-flight check before forcing the pod to lift off.

The force of the take-off slammed Vegeta into the back of his seat, and Goku was half-falling out of his own by the time they breached the moon’s atmosphere. Vegeta clutched tightly at the controls as he navigated the small spacecraft through the ship traffic around the moon, hoping they were small and unnoticeable enough to avoid drawing any fire from the surrounding ships. With any luck, the communication blackout Goku had triggered would last long enough for them to get back to Capsule 4.

They were half-way around the planet before the adrenaline began to recede from Vegeta’s veins. His entire body suddenly ached from injuries he’d sustained in the brief fight on the moon, and his knuckles throbbed from clutching the ship controls for so long. Time had raced past him in a blur, and he hadn’t realized the weight of the silence that hung in the cabin until he cast a sideways glance at Goku.

Goku was slumped against the hull of the pod, his eyes glazed and unfocused as he stared past the window in front him.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta said, reaching out to touch his shoulder, but Goku recoiled from his touch.

“You should have left me there,” he said, his voice a distant, breathless whisper. “You shouldn’t have come for me—you should have left me there, just left this system without me—”

“Kakarot,” Vegeta said, but his throat closed in upon itself, choking down whatever he had intended to say. Instead, he collapsed back into silence, and Goku followed suit, slipping back into a catatonic daze for the rest of the ship. By the time they finally reached Capsule 4 and docked in the airlock, it felt like days had passed, despite the onboard clock showing that they had been gone for no more than a few hours total.

Vegeta unsealed the pod’s hatch the moment the airlock had pressurized, and stumbled out of the pod while clutching at his injured ribs. “Cap4, open inner airlock door,” Vegeta ordered, feeling a small twinge of relief when the door spiraled open immediately.

Vegeta began to step out of the airlock, but paused to glance over his shoulder, expecting to find Goku following behind him. Instead, Goku was still in the pod, unmoving, his eyes fixed on the outer airlock door, almost as if he were contemplating throwing himself out of it.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta pleaded, his voice barely strong enough to register above a hoarse whisper. “Kakarot, you can’t stay in here—”

“You shouldn’t have brought me back,” Goku said, his voice splintering as the tears finally spilled over, tracing a line through the dirt and ash and blood smearing his cheeks.

“I couldn’t have done anything else,” Vegeta choked, and before Goku could react, Vegeta was back at the pod, reaching through the entrance and pulling Goku out.

Goku trembled in Vegeta’s grip, Vegeta holding the whole weight of him as Goku’s legs shook beneath himself.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” Vegeta said, wiping a thumb across Goku’s cheeks, smearing away the tears, staining Vegeta’s glove with blood and grime. Vegeta could hardly believe how blood seemed to cover every part of Goku—it crusted from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth; it matted the spikes his hair; it even congealed in the spaces between his eyelashes. Vegeta couldn’t begin to visualize the violence that had spilled it all—he felt ill just remembering the destroyed base, and the mangled corpses that had littered it.

“I should be dead,” Goku sobbed.

Vegeta’s throat tightened painfully. “I’m taking you to the ship’s head, and then we’re going to the medbay.”

He grabbed Goku’s wrist and pulled, leading him out of the airlock and into the corridor. Goku seemed to lack the energy to resist him, and tailed Vegeta in silence as he was pulled through the ship. Neither spoke until they reached the head.

Vegeta moved inside, turning on the water in the showers before turning back to Goku. Goku leaned against the bulkhead only to slide down to the floor, a fresh torrent of tears streaming down his face now. Vegeta found his chest aching with a pain far more visceral than the throbbing that radiated from his fractured ribs.

“Let me help you out of that suit,” Vegeta murmured as he crouched down to Goku’s level. He reached out and undid the shoulder clasps, helping as Goku shrugged out of the armor shell. Vegeta reached out for the battlesuit next; in any other situation, he would have admired how the tight material clung to Goku’s form, tracing out every muscle that was normally hidden under the loose folds of his gi, but instead Vegeta found it just looked _wrong_. Vegeta’s fingers grazed across the bloodstains and ki-burns  as he helped Goku pull off the garment, forcing himself to fight back the nausea that burned in the pit of his stomach.

“The shower should be warmed up by now, I’ll go get you a clean gi to wear—”

“Vegeta,” Goku interrupted, his voice small and trembling. “I’d really prefer to be alone right now.”

Vegeta met Goku’s gaze for a moment, and the anguish reflecting back at him was so overwhelming that it felt like a blow to the chest. The last thing Vegeta wanted to do was leave him alone in this state. But Vegeta knew better than anyone that sometimes being alone was the only safe option—that sometimes there was nothing else that could be done than to retreat into the darkness to lick at freshly-bleeding wounds.

Vegeta offered Goku a short, stiff nod before standing up and quietly leaving Goku behind.


	11. Attenuation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ++PLEASE NOTE++  
> There is a scene around the middle of this chapter that depicts an attempted sexual assault that I feel could potentially be triggering.  
> ++PLEASE NOTE++

* * *

 

 

Somehow, after everything, Vegeta found himself staring into the galley’s refrigerator.

His Saiyan appetite had been cut down to nothing, but the bitter taste of senzu lingered in his mouth, and water alone wasn’t rinsing it away. But nothing he saw appealed to him, and even the smell of food made his stomach turn, so he closed the door with an exasperated huff.

He moved instead to the cupboards, rifling through boxes of rations and pre-packaged food, barely registering the labels as he read them. Something glinted in the far corner, catching his eye, and he moved a few packages aside until he could see that it was a collection of liquor bottles that had been tucked away.

Leave it to Bulma to pack the essentials.

Vegeta did nothing to resist the impulse to grab the largest bottle. He rolled it in his palm for a moment, watching the amber liquid as it sloshed around. He unscrewed the cap, and the scent of it immediately burned his nostrils—he quickly decided that it would serve his needs well enough. He grabbed a glass, not even bothering with ice, and poured himself two fingers of the spirit.

He took a deep swig of the drink, satisfied with how it burned his throat. His whole body felt hollow and disconnected from the senzu bean he had eaten earlier; he hated resorting to them, hated how they made him feel—like every cell in his body somehow felt cheated out of the scarring and bruising and agony of natural healing. But the heat of the liquor bloomed in his chest, warming him from the inside, forcing his body to feel _something._

He was midway through his second swig of the drink when Goku appeared suddenly at the entry to the galley.

He was dressed in the gi Vegeta had left for him, and he somehow seemed smaller in the loose folds of the garment than he had in Vegeta’s battlesuit. The blood and dirt were scrubbed away, but even in the harsh glow of the galley’s fluorescent lights, Vegeta could see that his eyes were still rimmed with red.

“Hey,” he said, feigning a casual tone and doing a miserable job of it.

Vegeta grabbed another glass from the cupboard and poured a second drink, holding it out for Goku to take. “You look like you could use this.”

But Goku shook his head. “Oh, uh, no thank you, I don’t really drink—”

“Neither do I,” Vegeta muttered before downing the rest of his glass and filling it again. “Take it, Kakarot.”

Vegeta moved away from the counter, setting the second glass down on the table in front of Goku before grabbing the bottle and his own glass and taking a seat on the opposite side. Goku hesitated before finally taking a seat and pulling his glass toward himself.

“The good news is the drones are finished their water collection cycle,” Vegeta said around the lip of his glass before taking another swig. “We’ll be out of this system in a few hours.”

Goku looked down into his glass, giving it a sullen whirl before taking a gulp from it.

“Bad idea, if you ask me,” he muttered, grimacing as the drink went down. “I meant it when I said you should have left me down on that moon.”

Vegeta threw back the rest of his second drink before slamming his glass down on the table more forcefully than he had intended. “Kakarot, I’m not discussing—”

“I’m serious, Vegeta,” he said. “What do you think happens when we get to Earth? I couldn’t fight it, Vegeta! And this time it just—came out of nowhere! Every other time there’s been a—trigger, one of those… dreams, you know? But this time I just woke up, and, and—” Goku squeezed his eyes shut before his head fell into his hands. “Do you have any idea how many people I murdered today? Vegeta, don’t you realize how dangerous I am?”

Vegeta lifted the bottle and began pouring himself drink number three. “Kakarot, when I was possessed by Babidi, did you kill me for it?”

Goku rubbed at his eyes with his palms. “Well, no, but—”

“No. You didn’t,” Vegeta said. “And I _let_ Babidi in. By all accounts, you should have killed me the moment you had the chance, yet you didn’t.”

Goku winced at the suggestion. “I… I could never do that, Vegeta.”

Vegeta took another swig from his drink, his eyes never leaving Goku’s. “And neither can I.”

Goku flushed under Vegeta’s stare before looking away and taking another hesitant sip from his glass. Vegeta mirrored the motion before a faint smile flitted across his lips.

“You know, your first mistake was not killing me the day I first landed on Earth,” he said, shaking his head. As much as it still humiliated him, Vegeta couldn’t help but look upon the memory with a sort of distant amusement. “Gods, you _had_ me—letting me go was the stupidest move I’ve ever seen an enemy make.”

Goku’s flush only deepened.

“Well, I should probably confess that I didn’t spare you back then out of mercy,” he blurted. “At least—that wasn’t the only reason.”

Vegeta froze with his glass halfway to his mouth. “Oh?” he said, eyebrow raised.

“You were the strongest fighter I’d ever met,” Goku said, rubbing his neck as he looked away, as if suddenly lost in the memory. “I’d never seen anything like it—the way you fought, the way you moved—Kami, part of me never wanted to stop fighting you.”

Goku looked back at Vegeta, almost wincing. “Can you believe how foolish that is? How selfish?”

Vegeta couldn’t resist the wistful smirk that pulled at his lips. “How Saiyan.”

“Yeah,” Goku nodded softly, but when he spoke, his voice sounded hollow. “I guess you could say that, huh.”

Vegeta finished the last mouthful of his third drink. The warmth of it was already fading, replaced with a dim numbness that tingled across his skin. Goku finished the last of his drink as well before standing up to leave.

“Thanks for the drink, Vegeta,” he said quietly, turning to the entryway. “I think I’m gonna go to the observation deck for a bit. Don’t stay up too late, okay?”

Vegeta gave a clipped nod, rolling his empty glass in his hand as Goku left the galley.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Vegeta was still lying awake in his bunk when Goku finally made his way to Vegeta’s quarters.

Vegeta was lying on his side, facing the bulkhead, but he turned over when he heard the sound of Goku opening the hatch. Goku’s eyes met Vegeta’s in the dark, and for a moment, he hesitated at the threshold.

“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d still be awake this late, Vegeta.”

Vegeta shrugged. “It always feels like the middle of the night on this ship, anyway,” he half-lied, avoiding the deeper truth of his insomnia—in such a short time, he had become too accustomed to sleeping with Goku at his side, to the point where his absence was enough to leave Vegeta lying wide awake in the dark.

Goku said nothing, and moved to take a seat at the edge of the bunk. Vegeta watched him as he pulled off his boots and tugged off the top of his gi, expecting him to crawl under the covers and take his place next to Vegeta—but instead he remained still at the edge of the mattress, staring blankly at the cabin’s porthole.

Vegeta reached out, wrapping his hand around Goku’s wrist. “Come here, Kakarot.”

Goku’s voice was so quiet when he responded that Vegeta struggled to hear him over the ambient hum of the ship.

“I feel like I should sleep in my own bunk.”

Vegeta bristled at the suggestion. “Don’t be foolish—”

“I could really hurt you, Vegeta,” Goku said, turning to face Vegeta.

“You could hurt me regardless of where you lay your head for the night,” Vegeta snapped, and he yanked down on Goku’s arm until he fell back into the bunk. Goku shifted away, moving as if trying to get up again, but Vegeta’s arm wrapped around his waist, trapping him.

“Vegeta, please—”

“Kakarot… I like it better with you here,” Vegeta finally admitted, and he felt Goku stop struggling in his grip. Slowly, Goku turned over to face Vegeta, eyes wide as Vegeta pulled him in closer.

“Besides,” Vegeta added, “I’m offended you would think of me as so defenseless.”

Goku’s skin felt hot underneath Vegeta’s fingertips. “That’s not what I meant—”

“I know,” Vegeta said, allowing a weak grin as his hand brushed up the side of Goku’s neck, tracing out the line of his jaw.

“Aren’t you even a little bit afraid, though?” Goku asked, and he reached out for Vegeta in turn, running his palm up the side of Vegeta’s body.

Vegeta closed his eyes at the sensation of Goku’s fingers on his skin. “Not nearly as afraid as I was when I woke up only to feel you thousands of miles away from the ship.” Vegeta caught Goku’s hand in his own, and pulled it to his mouth to press a kiss into Goku’s palm.

A faint smile shattered Goku’s frown, and Vegeta felt his chest swell at the sight of it. This was how Goku was supposed to look—content, relaxed, possessed by a peace of mind that Vegeta could only envy.

“You should get some rest, Kakarot,” Vegeta said, brushing a thumb across Goku’s lips.

Goku merely nodded before burying his head against his pillow, and Vegeta didn’t resist as Goku pulled Vegeta closer toward him. Vegeta watched him until he fell asleep, slowly drifting off shortly after.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Hours after they had left Kami’s Lookout, Vegeta finally found Bulma in her lab._

_She had been gone since the moment they had arrived home at Capsule Corp. Vegeta hadn’t thought too much of it at first—he was still so disoriented in the aftermath of Buu that his entire world still seemed like it had blurred out of focus, and it didn’t immediately occur to him that Bulma might be deliberately hiding. It wasn’t until after he had finally sent Trunks to bed for the evening that Vegeta finally pulled himself together enough to search out his wife._

_When he found her, she was hunched over one of her lab benches, papers and equipment pushed into a disorganized heap on the floor. She was still wearing her red dress, but her high heels and yellow scarf had been pulled off and discarded to the side of her chair. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks inflamed where her tears had burned twin streaks down her skin. A near-empty bottle of wine was clutched in her fingers._

_It was several moments before Vegeta could finally shake his cowardice and force himself to speak._

_“Bulma.”_

_Bulma spun to face him, her eyes flashing with a hatred Vegeta didn’t think she was capable of._

_“Get out, Vegeta,” she barked at him, her voice breaking into a harsh sob. “I can’t even stand to fucking look at you right now.”_

_“This isn’t healthy,” Vegeta muttered, moving toward her lab bench and reaching for the wine bottle._

_“Oh,_ fuck _you,” she snarled, pulling the bottle away before he could touch it. “Don’t you even try to stand there and lecture me about what’s fucking_ healthy _—I had to stand by and watch you blow up an entire stadium of people today—I was there in the stands and you_ knew _that, you could have fucking_ killed _me—is that healthy, Vegeta?”_

_Vegeta said nothing, his teeth gritted as Bulma’s words slammed into him like shrapnel._

_“Is that really how you felt this whole time, Vegeta?” she said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, only to have fresh tears roll down her cheeks. “About me and Trunks—that we were just some—some liability, holding you back this whole time?”_

_Vegeta’s jaw clenched painfully. “No—Bulma, I made… a mistake—”_

_Bulma let out a harsh, barking laugh. “No, Vegeta, I’m the one who made a huge mistake here.” She paused, and Vegeta winced as she took a swig from her bottle. “I fucked up big time. I_ _let my guard down.”_

_Vegeta looked away, unable to watch as Bulma unraveled before him. Vegeta knew Bulma, knew what she was: she was an engineer in everything she did. He had watched her over the years produce inventions that bordered on miraculous, bending anything in her path to her mechanical will—including Vegeta himself. She had been the one to solder the frayed circuits of Vegeta’s life into her own, making him a part of her life on Earth whether he realized it or not._

_And for the first time in all the years Vegeta had known her, he could see she was doubting her own handiwork._

_“I knew what you were when I met you,” she went on. “I knew what you were capable of, and I still—I let myself fall in love with you. God, how could anyone be so fucking stupid?”_

_Despite his injuries from the day’s battle having healed hours ago, Vegeta felt like a wound had opened in his chest, lancing him straight between the lungs._

_“Bulma,” he repeated, and reached out for her hand before he could think better of it._

_The way she flinched away from him somehow stung more than her words._

_“Don’t,” she sobbed. “Don’t you touch me, Vegeta, don’t even think of it—”_

_“Bulma,” he said, forcing his next words out like each syllable hurt him to speak. “I’m sorry.”_

_Bulma laughed again, that same harsh, brittle sound as before, shaking her head as she wiped uselessly at her tears._

_“The sad thing is, I think you really mean that,” she said, her voice shaking as she choked back another sob. “But it’s—it’s not enough, Vegeta. I don’t think—I don’t think this is something you can ever come back from.”_

_She covered her face with her hands, and Vegeta watched her shoulders tremble as she wept. His ears rang and his world felt like it was dissolving around him as he slowly accepted that she was completely right—there were things you simply couldn’t come back from. She had let him into her home and into her family, had softened his edges over the years without even meaning to, and he had repaid her kindness with bloodshed and terror. All for a fleeting taste of power. He had slipped on an old, familiar mask just to see if it still fit, and she could never unsee what that had made him._

_It was the smallest mercy he could offer her to leave her lab without another word._

 

* * *

 

 

Vegeta woke up to the feeling of Goku’s palms caressing his stomach, and could feel Goku’s breath hot on the back of his neck. The details of whatever Vegeta had been dreaming about dissolved to nothing as he roused to half-consciousness, his body softening and relaxing in Goku’s touch.

It wasn’t until Kakarot’s voice slithered against his ear that Vegeta jolted fully awake.

“This whole time,” Kakarot whispered, the coldness of his voice like ice against Vegeta’s skin. “I had no idea that’s what sent you running out here to the stars in the first place.”

Vegeta’s entire body felt paralyzed as a sudden chasm of horror opened wide within him. Somehow, he found just enough strength to grab Kakarot’s hands wrapped around his body.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he hissed, pushing Kakarot’s hands away, desperate to escape the bunk, only to find himself trapped between Kakarot and the bulkhead.

But Kakarot’s hands were upon him again the moment Vegeta pulled them off, this time pinning Vegeta to the mattress by his shoulders.

“Is that why you fell into my arms so easily?” Kakarot continued to taunt him as Vegeta twisted and struggled beneath him. “You were just looking for some pathetic way to forget your ex-wife?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Vegeta snarled, finally pulling an arm free to hit Kakarot across the jaw, but in the cramped space the blow barely landed, and Kakarot grabbed his fist, laughing.

“I took another peek into that tormented little mind of yours,” Kakarot sneered, crushing his weight against Vegeta until it almost hurt to breathe. “I saw the fallout between you and Bulma—who knew the bitch scared so easily? You would have done better to punish her for such an egregious lapse in loyalty, Vegeta.”

  
Vegeta managed to free his other arm, this time managing to grab Kakarot’s throat and awkwardly force him back a few inches. “Speak like that again and I’ll make sure you fucking regret it.”

Kakarot licked his lips, his smirk widening. “Go on, then. Try it.”

The snarl that started in the base of Vegeta’s throat was suddenly silenced when Kakarot crushed their lips together, and Vegeta froze in horror beneath Kakarot—he tasted like Goku, he _felt_ like Goku, but—

Vegeta snapped abruptly to his senses when Kakarot bit down on his lip, hard enough to draw blood, and Vegeta pulled his mouth away, gasping

“Don’t _touch_ me,” he threatened, squeezing his fist harder around Kakarot’s throat.

The dark chuckle that escaped Kakarot’s lips sent a chill through Vegeta’s body.

“I can make you forget her.”

Vegeta moved to hit him again, but before Vegeta could register what was happening, Kakarot had already ascended to his Super Saiyan form, blocking Vegeta’s blow and pulling his neck free from Vegeta’s grasp. Vegeta followed suit, transforming immediately, but it wasn’t fast enough—Kakarot had already pushed Vegeta down, crushing his back into the mattress so hard that it knocked the breath from him.

“Kakarot!” Vegeta managed to yell as Kakarot tried to keep him pressed to the bed. Vegeta struggled beneath him, writhing and bucking beneath Kakarot’s weight to throw him off, managing little more than an elbow to the stomach and another clumsy hit to Kakarot’s face.

But Kakarot was persistent—he captured Vegeta’s wrists with one hand, pinning them down, his other hand reaching for Vegeta’s neck and squeezing his throat just as Vegeta had done to him, Vegeta’s snarling turning to strangled growls in Kakarot’s grip.

“Come on, Vegeta,” Kakarot laughed, and Vegeta’s blood threatened to boil in his veins at the sound of it. “Aren’t I the kind of Saiyan you always told me I should be? Isn’t this what you wanted, Vegeta?”

“Fuck you, Kakarot—”

But Kakarot’s mouth was suddenly on the crook of his neck, and Vegeta flinched as Kakarot’s teeth sank into his skin, ki sizzling like acid where Kakarot’s teeth drew blood. Vegeta cried out at the sensation, his throat suddenly freed as Kakarot’s hand travelled down Vegeta’s chest and abdomen, his touch rough and unrelenting as Vegeta thrashed against him. Slowly, Kakarot’s fingers edged toward Vegeta’s waistband, and Vegeta felt a blinding white panic overtake him.

“Kakarot—”

Rage and terror ran like an electric current down every nerve of Vegeta’s body until he felt like he was about to burn up with it—the thought of Kakarot daring to use Goku’s body like this sickened Vegeta so completely that he found himself choking back the urge to vomit, and when he felt Kakarot’s mouth kissing his skin again, Vegeta couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped his throat.

“ _Goku!_ ”

The name left Vegeta’s lips before he could stop himself. At first, he didn’t realize why Kakarot had suddenly gone still above him, and when Vegeta’s racing mind finally caught up with his mouth, his tongue felt like it might burn from the sacrilege of it. But Kakarot’s grip was loosening, his hands suddenly hesitant on Vegeta’s skin. Vegeta’s eyes burned as he squeezed them shut, and he uttered the name again like a prayer.

“Goku, please—”

Kakarot’s hands fell away, and Goku’s voice answered quietly in the darkness.

“...V-Vegeta?”

A shuddering breath escaped Vegeta as relief flooded through him, Goku suddenly pulling away from him. Vegeta shook as his Super Saiyan form slowly dissolved away, and it was several moments before he could find the strength to lift himself up, just enough to face Goku, who was on his knees, kneeling at the end of the bunk. He, too, had returned to his base form, but even without his Super Saiyan glow illuminating him, Vegeta could see his eyes watering in the darkness.

“Vegeta,” he said, and Vegeta could see him shaking as he tried to speak. “Vegeta—I’m sorry, I’m so—”

But Vegeta had closed the space between them, and grabbed Goku roughly by the shoulders. He couldn’t bear it anymore—he refused to listen to Goku apologize for any more of Kakarot’s atrocities.

“Goku,” Vegeta breathed, the name feeling more potent each time he spoke it. He cupped Goku’s cheek with his hand, his thumb wiping away the tear that had broken loose and rolled down Goku’s skin. “Stop...stop apologizing for—for him. None of this is your fault. I know you’re fighting this as hard as you can—”

Goku closed his eyes and leaned into Vegeta’s touch.

“Vegeta,” he whispered, and covered Vegeta’s hand with his own. “Please… call me that again.”

Vegeta’s muscles loosened, his grip on Goku’s shoulder softening.

“Goku,” he said, his voice dropping to something barely above a low whisper.

Goku’s other hand found Vegeta’s waist, his palm rubbing up the side of Vegeta’s body. But this time the touch was soft, almost hesitant—Vegeta welcomed the warmth of it.

“...Again,” Goku breathed, and Vegeta felt Goku’s hand pull him incrementally closer.

Vegeta’s hands found the back of Goku’s neck, his fingers slipping between the spikes of Goku’s hair. Their foreheads met as Vegeta pulled their faces closer together.

“Goku,” he said again, and before he could kiss Goku, Goku had done it first, his hands digging into Vegeta’s hips as he drew Vegeta toward himself. A strangled moan escaped Goku’s throat as he tasted Vegeta’s mouth, and Vegeta felt light-headed, more intoxicated by Goku’s taste and touch than from the drink they had shared in the galley.

It was torment when Goku suddenly pulled away.

“Vegeta,” he panted. “I—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—after what I just—” He shook his head, refusing to meet Vegeta’s eyes when Vegeta’s hand found his jaw. “It’s not right for me to even stay here—”

“Goku,” Vegeta repeated, firmer this time. He finally managed to turn Goku’s face toward himself. “I want you. I want _you_.”

Vegeta kissed him again, holding Goku’s face between his hands, refusing to let him turn away, as if Kakarot might return the moment he let go. Then Vegeta’s hands were on Goku’s body, stripping away his remaining clothes, his hands grasping at Goku’s skin as if he could pull his soul free of his body and away from the demon that had taken shape within. Goku moaned beneath Vegeta’s lips, and Vegeta shivered at the sound, wanting to hear it again—wanting to hear it over and over until he could forget what Kakarot sounded like—

The next moments passed in a dark, hot blur—clothes tore and sheets tangled, lips mouthed at heated skin, hands and fingers touched and pressed, coaxing each other in a surge of rushed preparation—and then Vegeta had backed Goku against the bulkhead, straddling his hips, and before either could stop themselves, Vegeta felt Goku inside of him.

Goku cried out, his hands digging into Vegeta’s hips, and Vegeta held his breath as his arms wrapped around Goku’s neck—for a moment, Vegeta didn’t move, his whole body stilled in the instant that Goku filled him. It wasn’t until he finally crushed his mouth to Goku’s that he began to rock his hips.

Goku moaned around Vegeta’s lips with each movement, his hands digging into Vegeta’s hips as he dragged Vegeta harder against him. Vegeta sped up his pace in time with Goku’s moans, and soon he was unable to withhold his own desperate gasps. Goku’s mouth pulled away, finding Vegeta’s throat instead, his lips pressing at the raw bite-mark that Kakarot had left behind.

“Goku,” Vegeta breathed, his body clenching and his eyes squeezing shut as Goku’s mouth soothed the wound.

“Vegeta,” Goku gasped back, his voice muffled against Vegeta’s throat, his hands moving upward until he could wrap his arms around Vegeta’s body. He gripped Vegeta hard as he began to thrust into him, matching Vegeta’s frenzied pace as they spiralled closer to their completion.

“Vegeta,” Goku gasped again, holding Vegeta to him so tightly that Vegeta could barely draw in a breath. “Vegeta—I love you—”

This time, Vegeta let him finish the words—this time, he let himself feel them—and Vegeta fought hopelessly against the throbbing ache that split open in his chest. He bit down on his lip, swallowing down the sob that threatened to escape his throat, his hands tangling in Goku’s hair.

Goku cried out as he came, his body stuttering against Vegeta as he finished, and Vegeta followed shortly behind, gasping and shaking against Goku’s body as he did.

It was a long time before Vegeta finally separated from Goku, collapsing back into the tangled sheets half-torn from the bunk. His chest heaved as he worked to catch his breath, and he threw the back of his arm against his forehead, his eyes falling closed as he weakly wiped away the sweat that had beaded along his skin.

He felt Goku crawl between the space between his legs, his arms resting on Vegeta’s thighs as his mouth pressed a soft trail of kisses up Vegeta’s abdomen. He dragged his tongue across Vegeta’s skin, cleaning him, and Vegeta shivered at the feeling.

His hands curled into Goku’s hair as his mouth moved to Vegeta’s chest.

“Kakaro—” Vegeta began to say, but the word dissolved in his mouth before he could finish it, the back of his throat stinging with the unfinished syllable. He felt Goku stiffen on top of him.

“Don’t,” Goku whispered, looking up as Vegeta opened his eyes. Despite the darkness, Vegeta could see the pain glimmering behind Goku’s gaze. “That name—it used to be something that only belonged to you and me, but—he’s taken it from me.”

Vegeta didn’t have to say anything—he knew what Goku meant. He only swallowed, and nodded.

Goku moved to lie beside him, collapsing in the space between Vegeta and the bulkhead. He wrapped an arm across Vegeta’s body, and Vegeta curled into his touch.

“I’m sorry,” Goku suddenly whispered after several moments of heavy silence between them.

Vegeta closed his eyes and sighed.

“K—Goku,” he corrected. “Stop, I mean it—you don’t have to apologize, it’s not—”

“No,” Goku interrupted. “I mean—I’m sorry about—you and Bulma, I...I had no idea what had happened between you two.”

Vegeta shrugged, trying to ignore the stinging pain that accompanied the memory.

“It is what it is,” he muttered. “I betrayed her. I betrayed everyone, including myself. And not everyone can be as forgiving as you—nor should they be.”

He felt Goku hold him just a little bit tighter before pressing a soft kiss to his temple. “I know that,” he whispered against Vegeta’s ear. “Bulma was scared that that was the real you. But I knew it wasn’t—I could see through you the whole time. I knew your Majin form wasn’t what was really in your heart.”

Vegeta felt his face burn, unable to run from the shame and regret when he was trapped in Goku’s arms.

Instead, he deflected.

“Hm,” he said, turning on his side so he could face Goku more directly. “I suppose I could ask you what exactly went on between you and _your_ wife.”

Vegeta felt Goku’s arms stiffen around him.

“What makes you think something happened between me and Chi-Chi?”

Vegeta levelled a cynical stare in Goku’s direction. “We literally just finished fucking, Goku—odd behaviour for a married man.”

Goku shifted uncomfortably in the bed. “Well, if you’re suggesting that I would cheat—”

“Maybe not,” Vegeta said. “In fact, if my understanding of human marriage vows is correct, the entire ‘until death do you part’ clause seems to render the entire affair null and void when you die. By that logic, you should be well off the hook by now.”

Goku looked away, distracting himself by curling one of his fingers into Vegeta’s hair, playing absently with a few disheveled strands. “That’s not it.”

“Then what?” Vegeta pressed.

Goku was silent for several moments, and Vegeta could sense the discomfort that had taken hold of him. Vegeta ran a hand down the length of Goku’s torso, and Goku’s muscles seemed to loosen slightly at the touch.

“I was dead for seven years, Vegeta,” Goku finally managed to say, hesitating on each word. “Chi-Chi… grieved. Moved on. She thought she was happy when I came back, and in a lot of ways I think she was, but... “ Goku trailed off, shaking his head. “Things just never really went back to the way they were before. I tried, I really did—but I don’t think it was something I could put back together.”

“Is that all it took for her to forget you? Seven years?” Vegeta said before he could stop himself, surprised by the anger seeping into his voice. “Not all of us can move on so easily.”

Heat rose to Vegeta’s cheeks when he realized the full scope of what he had admitted. He wanted to pull away, turn over and shrug Goku’s arms off, but the way Goku stared at him left him powerless to move.

“Well, for what it’s worth,” Goku said with a faint smile. “When I was in Otherworld, I don’t think a day went by when I didn’t think about you.”

Vegeta said nothing, even if the truth was that he had done the same in Goku’s absence. Instead, he closed his eyes, letting himself sink into the feeling of Goku’s hand stroking his skin, his fingers brushing through the fine hairs at the nape of his neck.

“Vegeta?” Goku said, his voice heavy and dreamlike, as if he were on the cusp of drifting off to sleep.

“Yes?”

“If we… If we ever get back to Earth in one piece,” he went on. “Can we… stay together? Just like this? Maybe we can make a place of our own, just for us.”

For a moment, Vegeta couldn’t help but think back to what had happened down on the moon—the image of Kakarot covered in blood, framed in fire and ash, came into clear, painful focus in Vegeta’s mind’s eye. The thought of Kakarot visiting such a fate upon Earth chilled Vegeta to his core.

But Vegeta couldn’t bear to think about it, and the warmth he felt in Goku’s arms was stronger than even his worst fears.

He closed his eyes and simply nodded.

“Whatever you’d like, Goku.”

 

 

 


	12. Quarantine

* * *

 

 

As their journey wore on, Vegeta was forced to watch Goku steadily slip away.

His episodes became more frequent—less predictable—and sometimes it happened so quickly that Vegeta didn’t realize until after Goku had become himself again that the switch had even happened at all. But Vegeta learned quickly how to sense when Kakarot flickered in and out of existence—he knew him for what he was with every dark smirk flashed in the middle of dinner, every too-hard hit when they sparred, each cutting comment dropped mid-conversation.

When Goku was himself, he spent more and more time hiding on the observation deck, refusing to be coaxed out no matter how much Vegeta tried. He missed meals. He slept less. Some nights he never came to Vegeta’s bunk, and Vegeta started re-learning how to sleep alone.

By the time Earth was only days away, dread had overtaken Vegeta almost completely.

He woke from his sleep with it, the weight of his unease so intense that it rivaled the gravity deck, crushing him into the mattress of his cold, empty bunk. His chest hurt from the pressure of it, like suddenly he could _feel_ the impossible speed of the ship, each light year sinking into his bones, weakening him—suffocating him.

A sort of desperation overtook Vegeta as he threw off his covers, his skin cold and clammy in the stale air of his cabin. Suddenly, he felt more than anything that he needed to get to the bridge—he had to contact Earth. He hadn’t heard any news from Bulma since they had last spoken, and it was beginning to occur to Vegeta that perhaps this was a problem that even her towering intellect couldn’t solve. Bulma wasn’t aware of how bad things had gotten on Capsule 4—Vegeta knew he had to warn her and the others, if nothing else.

Vegeta dressed quickly before leaving his cabin, racing to the ship’s main deck before he could think better of it. He could sense Goku’s ki in the bridge before he got there. Vegeta didn’t know why Goku was there—part of him hoped that Goku was simply trying to make contact with Earth himself, to check in with Bulma or his own family. But Vegeta braced himself for worse possibilities—it could very well be Kakarot waiting inside, busy poring over star charts to see what planet he could terrorize next.

Vegeta held his breath when he stepped inside.

Goku was seated at the main console, at the terminal that was the closest approximation of a captain’s seat. Goku’s back faced him as Vegeta stepped inside, his form back-lit by the display on the bridge’s main screen. Vegeta’s gaze skimmed the visuals thrown up on the screen—there was a large navigational chart of the local quadrant, a real-time graphic of the ship moving through subspace, and in the center, the map of a planetary system that Vegeta could recognize immediately, even without any identifying labels: a yellow dwarf, eight planets in orbit around it, the third one from the center blinking in false colour.

“So unassuming, isn’t it?”

Vegeta’s jaw clenched when he recognized the voice, and he nearly flinched when Kakarot glanced at him over his shoulder.

“What do you mean?” Vegeta said, forcing his tone to stay level and even.

“Our little homeworld, of course,” Kakarot said, before uttering a harsh laugh. “Well—not our proper homeworld, but you know what I mean.”

Vegeta said nothing, but felt a familiar coil of horror tighten around his insides.

“If I’ve learned anything from this journey—and your memories—it’s that a planet like that is rare,” Kakarot went on. “And what was it you said to me at the beginning of this journey? A planet like that is a target for those who wish to take it—something to that effect, yes? Well.” Kakarot paused, leaning back in his seat. “I think I wish to take it.”

Vegeta felt ice in his blood.

“You of all people should know how many have tried and failed to visit destruction on that particular planet,” Vegeta said, swallowing his revulsion as a satisfied smirk spread across Kakarot’s lips. “Myself included.”

“Yes,” Kakarot agreed. “And you’re forgetting that I was the one who stopped them all.”

Vegeta said nothing. He looked past Kakarot, to the bridge’s viewscreen—buried beneath the larger graphics was a small, unassuming window counting down their time until they reached their home system. Vegeta’s fists clenched at his sides—the time could be measured in a matter of days now.

“Say, Vegeta,” Kakarot cut into his thoughts, his voice taking on a mocking veneer of friendliness. “When you first came to Earth, what was it you were planning to wish with the Dragon Balls?”

Kakarot turned to face him now, and Vegeta loathed every inch of the hateful smile that split Kakarot’s face. “Kakarot, you know what I—”

“Immortality, wasn’t it?”

“A short-sighted wish,” Vegeta managed to hiss between clenched teeth.

“Not very creative, I’ll give you that,” Kakarot mused, tapping at his lips with a single finger. “But I can certainly see the appeal.”

Vegeta swallowed. “You can’t seriously be—”

“Do you think Bulma would give me the Dragon Radar if I asked nicely?” he said. “Or do you think I’d have to… take it from her?”

The implication was not lost on Vegeta, and he could feel the heat rising in his skin, rage and ki simmering in equal measure.

“Kakarot, if you so much as touch her—”

Kakarot cut him off with a cold, hollow laugh as he stood up from the captain’s seat. He moved  toward Vegeta, and trapped him against the bulkhead before Vegeta could move away.

“Don’t get your spandex in a bunch,” he sneered before tapping Vegeta on the cheek with the flat of his palm. Vegeta recoiled at the touch, his mouth curling into a silent snarl as Kakarot brushed past him to the doorway.

“The bridge is all yours, Vegeta,” Kakarot said, smirking over his shoulder before slipping into the outer corridor.

Vegeta’s fists shook at his sides as he watched Kakarot leave.

 

 

* * *

 

 

That night, Goku resurfaced long enough to find his way into Vegeta’s quarters.

He came to Vegeta red-eyed and quiet, weeping silently as he collapsed into Vegeta’s bunk. Vegeta pulled him close as he wept, stroking his hair and whispering to him as he quaked in Vegeta’s arms, but nothing seemed to soothe him. It was a long time before Goku finally fell into a shallow, fitful sleep, and by that time Vegeta’s hatred for Kakarot had swelled into a sharp, boiling rage that burned in his throat.

Vegeta didn’t sleep after that.

Instead, he he lay still, staring up at the ceiling. He couldn’t stop dwelling on his encounter on the bridge with Kakarot—Vegeta had never made contact with Earth like he had intended. He knew Cap4 logged every single transmission, inbound and outbound, and there was nothing to stop Kakarot from accessing any message Vegeta chose to send. If he tried to warn Bulma and the others… Vegeta didn’t want to contemplate what Kakarot’s reaction would be if he found out.

But Vegeta had to do something.

Quietly, he let go of Goku and slid out of his bunk, quickly pulling on a battlesuit but skipping his armor before he left the cabin. The ship’s corridors were dark, the lights dimmed to create an artificial sense of nighttime, which only strengthened Vegeta’s growing sense of unease as he moved through the shadows.

He didn’t like this idea. There was a very real possibility it would get him killed. But with Earth only days away now, and no way to safely contact anyone there, Vegeta’s options were limited.

Vegeta dropped down to the deck below, and then to the one below that, bypassing even the gravity deck and the cargo hold until he was in the very belly of the ship. He hadn’t been here since Bulma had given him his original tour of the ship—there had simply never been any reason to. Capsule 4 was a largely self-sufficient ship that was designed well enough that it could easily get by without a crew—and its engine deck was no different.

The engine room itself was sealed off with a large, heavy hatch, heavier even than the doors to the gravity deck. After dropping down the last stair-ladder, Vegeta moved forward to the control panel embedded next to the hatch and keyed in his credentials. A small, electronic chime rang in acknowledgement, and the hatch slid open, granting him access to the very heart of the ship.

Where the rest of the ship was cramped and narrow, the engine room was the opposite—it was a wide, open expanse, a mechanical cathedral of chrome and cabling, its floors punctured by obelisks of smooth, blinking computer terminals. Here, the hum of the ship was strongest, a pulsing heartbeat emanating from twin, metal toruses stacked at the center of the chamber:

The ship’s ki drive.

It was what gave the ship the power to warp the fabric of space—what allowed it to move at hyperlight speed between the stars. Vegeta could sense its energy, just as real as a living thing, albeit far colder.   

“ _Hello, Vegeta_ ,” Cap4 suddenly spoke, unprompted, its disembodied voice echoing above the deep hum of the engine. “ _May I be of assistance to you? I assure you all engine functions are running optimally._ ”

“Didn’t ask,” Vegeta muttered, coming to a stop at the base of the drive coils. He couldn’t help but get the sense that underneath Cap4’s cool, clinical pleasantry, its real meaning went unsaid: _there is no reason for you to be here; leave immediately._

“Actually,” Vegeta said, a bitter smirk tugging at his lips. “Cap4, maybe you _can_ be of assistance to me.”

“ _Certainly.”_

“I want you to shut down the ki drives,” Vegeta said, his voice taking on a distant, mechanical quality that made Cap4 seem almost human by comparison. “Then I want you to open the fuel-substrate cores and flush all our fuel into the vacuum.”

A long pause followed.

“Well?” said Vegeta, tapping his boot impatiently against the floor. “I didn’t ask you to calculate a billion digits of _pi_ , here—”

“ _Vegeta_ ,” Cap4 interrupted. “ _By doing as you request, the ship would be abruptly forced out of subspace travel, stranding it in interstellar space far from your home system. It could take weeks, or months, for a rescue or repair vessel to be sent to you._ ”

“Yes, that’s kind of the point.”

Another pause. Vegeta almost felt a sort of sick pride in managing to render the AI speechless.

“ _I’m afraid I cannot do as you reques_ _t_ ,” Cap4 finally responded, and Vegeta imagined he was able to hear a vein of disgust beneath Cap4’s artificial tone. “ _Doing so would violate several of my fundamental operational directives_.”

“Request to override your ‘fundamental operational directives,’ then.”

“ _Denied. Only a direct request from the Engineer can—_ ”

“Afraid you would say that,” Vegeta said, and moved away from the ki drive, circling around until he came to stand in front its main control terminal.

The easy thing to do would be to blast the engine itself. Of course, that would cause an explosion that would destroy the entire ship, and Vegeta’s intention wasn’t to kill himself and Kakarot. All he needed was to buy time. Even if it was just a few weeks—anything to give Bulma more time to work on a cure, or for Vegeta to find some way to manage the situation himself. But he couldn’t allow Kakarot to reach Earth.

The image of Kakarot on the base moon rose in Vegeta’s mind—splattered in blood, haloed by fire, a lifeless corpse dangling from his fists. Vegeta imagined the corpse of the soldier replaced with Trunks. Or Bulma. Gohan, or Goten.

Vegeta’s stomach lurched at the thought, and he forced himself to take a deep breath to steady himself against it.

He tapped quickly at the terminal, swiping past Cap4’s real-time engine diagnostics until he was skimming through screens of dense schematics. Vegeta quickly realized there was no simple way to do this. The fastest route would be to open the fuel cores from the outside of the ship—but that would require an EVA, and the thought of going anywhere near an airlock again was simply out of the question. His only option would be to crawl into the cramped utility tunnels until he could find and sabotage the fuel lines himself.

Vegeta went to work as quickly as he could, throwing open the storage cabinet beneath the terminal to pull out a tool kit and a tablet. He flicked his hand across the tablet’s screen, downloading copies of the maps and blueprints he’d need to do the ugly work of crippling the ship’s engines. The nearest hatch into the utility tunnels was just outside the engine room—he would start there.

 _Forgive me, Bulma,_ Vegeta thought as he logged out of the terminal in front him, _for what I’m about to do to your ship._

But it wouldn’t matter. By the time Vegeta sensed an approaching ki, it was already too late.

Vegeta froze, his hand hovering above the terminal’s touchscreen. A buzzing dread uncurled from his brainstem as he felt Goku’s ki brushing against his own, coming closer to the engine room. But no— _not_ Goku’s ki, Vegeta knew he wouldn’t be so lucky—

Vegeta turned his head, facing the wide, open doorway. Goku’s figure was drawing nearer.

Vegeta moved quickly, thoughtlessly, walking toward the doorway as if he could somehow head Kakarot off.

“Goku—” he called out. A desperate, last-ditch flare of optimism.

“Don’t call me that,” he said, in Kakarot’s icy, condescending tones. He came quickly towards Vegeta, his movements smooth to the point he seemed almost artificial, like some forgotten android just emerging from Dr. Gero’s lab.

“What are you doing down here?” Vegeta managed to ask, fighting against the vice of panic clamping down on this throat.

“I could ask you the same fucking thing,” Kakarot hissed, and suddenly he had cleared the last few feet remaining between him and Vegeta, his fist swinging as he lunged forward.

Vegeta managed to catch his fist, blocking the blow, and blocked the next one, too. Vegeta managed to grab Kakarot’s forearms, trapping him in his grip, but then Kakarot was snarling into Vegeta’s face, a whirl of ki bursting around him as he ascended to Super Saiyan. Vegeta failed to anticipate the headbutt that slammed him in the forehead, and he was sent  skidding on his back across the floor of the engine room, only stopping when his body collided with a terminal.

“I know what you’re doing here,” Vegeta heard Kakarot saying somewhere above him, the ringing in his ears so deafening he could barely make out his voice. “You think you’re clever, Vegeta?"

Kakarot’s hand fisted the front of Vegeta’s battlesuit, and the room spun in sickening colours around Vegeta as Kakarot hoisted him from the floor.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—” Vegeta started, but was rewarded with a sharp hook into his mouth, his lip splitting open beneath Kakarot’s fist.

“Don’t you fucking lie to me, Vegeta,” Kakarot shouted, spinning Vegeta around and slamming him up against the metal base of the ki-drive itself. Vegeta was distantly aware of a sort of cold buzz suddenly tingling up his spine across his skin, like his whole body were conducting a static charge.

“Stop!” Vegeta barked as Kakarot slammed his head against the metal, and he reached up to grab Kakarot’s forearms again. “If you damage the drive you’ll fucking kill us both!”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Kakarot said, his icy gaze boring into Vegeta’s.

“No, that’s not—” Vegeta said, struggling in Kakarot’s grasp, trying to shake free but finding himself too dizzy to muster the strength.

Kakarot’s eyes narrowed sharply, but then he glanced away, suddenly catching a glimpse of the tablet and toolkit that Vegeta had left out on the nearby terminal. The engine schematics still glowed on the screen.

“Right. I get it. You weren’t trying to destroy the engines, were you?” Kakarot said, dragging his gaze back to look at Vegeta. “You were just trying to disable them.”

Vegeta opened his mouth to counter him, but Kakarot snapped an arm out of Vegeta’s grasp, his hand grabbing Vegeta by the throat. Vegeta’s fingers clawed at Kakarot’s arm as his fist crushed Vegeta’s airway, but Kakarot’s grip only tightened.

Kakarot laughed. The noise rolled off of him in loud, hateful peals, his shoulders shaking with it.

“I get it. I get it now,” he said, a demonic smile contorting his face. “You thought you were buying time. Trap us out here long enough, maybe Bulma can find that “cure” she’s chasing—maybe you can find a way to undo all this.” Kakarot laughed again, choking Vegeta harder as he did, slamming his head back against the ki drive. “Oh, you still really don’t fucking get it, do you, Vegeta?”

Vegeta’s protests turned to strangled gurgling noises in Kakarot’s grip, his fingers digging into Kakarot’s fist hard enough to draw blood. His ki sputtered around him as he struggled to transform, but the world was quickly becoming a creeping blackness that felt like it was closing in on him.

“I’m going to spell this out for you, Vegeta, nice and simple for you to understand,” Kakarot said, his laugh quieting to a dark chuckle under his breath. “You’re going to fail, Bulma’s going to fail—do you know why? Because there’s nothing to _cure_ . There’s nothing to fix. The infection—it _already_ fixed me, and more—it’s _transformed_ me.”

Kakarot pulled down on Vegeta’s neck, swinging Vegeta’s body into the nearby terminal hard enough that the metal casing cracked from the force. Vegeta let out a sputtered cry from the pain of the impact, but finally he could breathe again—he reached for his neck, trying to soothe the bruised tissue with his fingers.

Kakarot smirked down at Vegeta as he tried to get his bearings, watching him as he leaned heavily on the console for support.

“You were only half-right, Vegeta,” Kakarot went on. “The infection rewired what was previously damaged, yes—you managed to figure that much out. But it did so much more. And I’ve figured out why. It’s all because of _you_.”

Vegeta swayed where he stood, one hand still braced against the terminal. The room continued  to spin around him; Kakarot wasn’t making any sense. “What—what are you talking about?”

Kakarot’s eyes gleamed with a cold, malicious glee.

“Haven’t you wondered about the dreams?”

Vegeta swiped against his split lip, blood smearing across the back of his hand. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“It was the Fusion,” Kakarot said, his voice starting to rise with a sick sort of excitement. “We left behind parts of each other after we unfused—shrapnel, embedded in each other’s psyches, lying dormant. Until the infection coaxed them out again. And while my mind was piecing itself back together, undoing the damage from my infancy—it used your memories like _blueprints_. You were guiding my transformation all along. The original pathogen—it could only do so much. _You_ provided the key to unlock my nature.”

Vegeta shook his head, Kakarot’s words hitting him harder than any blow to the skull. “No—no, that’s not—”

“You know it makes sense, Vegeta. It’s been in front of us all along.”

“No—”

“You were just as much of a contaminant as the infection was, Vegeta.”

Something opened up within Vegeta, a suffocating gulf so wide and dark and awful that he felt like he was choking all over again. Out of that chasm rose something hotter than any rage he had ever felt, a burning maelstrom that left his senses clouded beyond his control, and before Vegeta could reign it in, he had ascended in a burst of crackling gold.

“No!”

He lunged toward Kakarot, his fist hooking Kakarot across the cheek. Kakarot snarled at the assault, quickly moving to block Vegeta’s next flurry of hits. Vegeta eventually dropped his fists and clutched Kakarot by the front of his shirt, trying to push him down, but Kakarot immediately reacted by grabbing his arms and swinging Vegeta to the floor.

“Stop this!” Vegeta roared, writhing in Kakarot’s grip. “Goku—”

Kakarot punched him across the jaw. “Shut up. Your silly name trick won’t work anymore—”

But Vegeta was screaming now. “Goku! Goku—”

“Shut _up!_ ” Vegeta felt his nose crunch under Kakarot’s fist, and watched Kakarot’s hand come away covered in Vegeta’s blood. “He’s _gone._ ” Kakarot hit him again; pain burst across Vegeta’s eye this time. “And there’s nothing you, or Bulma, or even the fucking Dragon Balls can do to _bring him back._ ” Another hit; Vegeta felt like his cheekbone had shattered.

Vegeta trembled underneath Kakarot’s weight. His blood burned with the need to fight back, to destroy the enemy doing this to him and reduce him to nothing but charred ash—but every time he looked at Kakarot, he was too desperate to see anything but Goku.

He closed his eyes, and his voice shook when he spoke again. “Goku, please—”

Kakarot snarled before his fist connected with Vegeta’s face once again, and it was the last thing Vegeta heard before everything went black.

 

* * *

 


	13. Autoclave

 

* * *

 

Vegeta rolled over on his side, covering one of his temples with his hand. The explosive pain ringing in his skull was louder than everything else—the weak pulse of his heart, the steady thrum of the ship—all of it was drowned away by the deafening throb of his headache.

He opened his eyes, and was greeted with harsh, white light that felt like shards of hot glass lancing through overblown pupils. It was several moments before his vision could resolve the spinning, diplopic blur around him, but slowly, he recognized his surroundings.

He was in the medbay.

Vegeta pushed himself up from the hard examination table he was on, nearly collapsing to the floor as he slid off of it. The floor felt like it was giving away beneath his feet as he lurched toward the sink, gripping the edge of the counter for balance. He reached for the faucet, nearly doubled over, his breath shuddering as he splashed the first few handfuls of cool water against his face. The water soon ran pink with his blood, his wounds stinging from the treatment. He winced every time his hand brushed his eye, the flesh so tender and swollen that he could barely see out of the slit of his eyelids, and the bridge of his nose felt no better.

As the water finally began to run to clear, it occurred to Vegeta that Kakarot had left him here deliberately. He had been given no senzu, no attention from any of the medbots—he had just been unceremoniously dumped on a table and left to fend for himself. The message was clear: _stay here and lick your own wounds while you think about what you’ve done._

Vegeta felt sick.

As he pilfered a packet of anti-inflammatories from the med dispenser, Vegeta tried not to think about Kakarot’s words in the engine room. He shook a few tablets into his palm before swallowing them, trying to ignore the nausea simmering in his stomach, then went to work digging through one of the first aid drawers. He quickly grabbed and snapped the first cold pack he could find, feeling lightheaded as he held it against his swollen eye. He squeezed his eye shut against the ice, as if it might help block out the image Kakarot’s hideous, gleeful smile from his mind—but it didn’t, and Vegeta’s vision swam as Kakarot’s words echoed in his skull—

_You were just as much of a contaminant as the infection was, Vegeta._

Vegeta’s entire world felt like it was shifting around him, a tectonic rift tearing open beneath him, and he was suddenly struck with a vertigo that felt entirely separate from his head injuries.

He stumbled out of the medbay, one hand holding the cold pack against the face, his other braced against the bulkhead as he felt his way down the corridor. The lights were painfully bright—the ship was in its artificial day cycle already. Vegeta hadn’t realized how long he had been unconscious for.

When he reached his cabin, it was dark and cool, and he gave no orders to Cap4 to turn on the lights. Instead, he collapsed onto his bunk and curled in on himself, not even bothering to crawl under the covers.

Vegeta lay like that for a long time, too listless to move. Time blurred past him, minutes stretching into what felt like hours. He could feel Kakarot’s ki in the bridge again, but couldn’t bring himself to wonder what he was doing there. Sometimes, Vegeta would simply gaze at the cabin’s viewport, watching the warped star trails streaking past, and simply _hated._ He hated the stars, he hated the void between them—hated the entire galaxy and the universe beyond it that had allowed this to happen to Goku. He hated himself.

But the universe did not deign to hate Vegeta back. Instead, it raced indifferently past the viewport, its edges warping and blurring around the hull as the ship punched through it, gliding closer and closer to a single, unremarkable yellow star that couldn’t be much further now. Earth was getting closer—so close now that Vegeta could swear he almost felt it.

Vegeta let his eyes fall closed, but didn’t sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Vegeta spent the next two days like an animal in a cage. He alternated between hiding in his bunk and pacing the narrow length of his cabin, emerging for food and water only when he sensed that Kakarot’s ki was safely sequestered on the gravity deck. And he tracked Kakarot’s ki obsessively—he noted each minute that Kakarot spent between the bridge and the galley and the gravity deck, and was left to wonder if the monster ever fucking _slept_. Vegeta certainly wasn’t—not when he felt trapped between the demon living in the heart of the ship and the oppressive void of space pressing down like an infinite weight from all directions.

In all his years of space travel, Vegeta had never known a claustrophobia this suffocating.

Sometimes he fantasized about tearing the hull open, blasting it apart with his ki or even rending it apart with his own hands, just to end the misery once and for all. More than once he found himself with his palms pressed shaking against the bulkhead of his cabin, tempted. Tempted to split the entire ship in two, to throw himself to the mercy of the vacuum and take Kakarot screaming soundlessly with him.

He relished the fantasy. Indulged in it feverishly.

It was only the thought of Goku that brought him back to lucidity.

He could kill Kakarot without a second thought, but killing Goku—it wasn’t an option. It was never going to be an option. It was enough to leave him doubled over on his bunk, gutted just from the thought.

By the third day of his isolation, Vegeta’s injuries had healed to dull, purpling bruises, and his mind had begun to clear—slowly, his paralyzing despair began to recede, burnt away by a slowly mounting panic.

He sat at the edge of his bunk, too restless for sleep and too dissociated from any day-night cycle to care anymore, and asked Cap4 how long now until they reached Earth.

“ _Capsule4 expected to breach Oort space in approximately fifty hours, Earth standard,_ ” the AI informed him. More than ever, Vegeta despised the cool indifference of its voice.

Vegeta sat hunched over, elbows digging into his knees as his hands pulled through the spikes of his hair. An awful solution to his problem was beginning to take shape in his mind, and as much as he was trying to ignore it, time was running out. If he didn’t do something, _anything_ , soon, Earth would pay the price for his inaction.

It didn’t change the fact that he hated everything he was about to do.

He stood up from his bunk and quickly slipped on a fresh battlesuit and boots, skipping his armor and gloves. There was no point in armor anymore—fighting was getting him nowhere.

Vegeta left his cabin and quickly dropped down to the decks below, following the flare of Kakarot’s ki. He didn’t stop until it led him to the heavy, familiar doors of the gravity deck.

Vegeta swallowed thickly as he felt out Kakarot’s ki inside. “Cap4, open gravity deck doors.”

The AI chimed in agreement, and the doors hissed open. Dim, red light bathed Vegeta as he stepped inside, and he stood stiffly at the entrance, jaw clenched as the doors closed shut behind him.

“Finally finished licking your wounds, are you?”

Vegeta looked to the source of Kakarot’s voice, and watched as Kakarot approached him from the center of the room, stopping a few steps short of Vegeta. He crossed his arms over his chest, clad in Saiyan armor and a blue battlesuit, like a twisted mirror image of Vegeta.

“Yes,” Vegeta said evenly, resisting the urge to clench his fists at his sides—it wouldn’t aid his performance if every part of him was radiating tension and barely-contained hatred. “Thanks to you, I’ve had some time to… reflect.”

Kakarot raised an eyebrow, his usual smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “And? You want a rematch for the engine deck episode? I’d be more than happy to crank the G’s—”

“No,” Vegeta interrupted. “That’s not it, Kakarot.”

“Then what, Vegeta?” Kakarot’s voice darkened, and he stepped closer, leaning into Vegeta’s space until Vegeta had to fight back the impulse to pull away. “Because if you’re here in some pathetic attempt to lure out Goku, I should tell you now that my patience is wearing dangerously thin—”

“No,” Vegeta said again. “I’m here to talk to _you._ ”

“All right then,” Kakarot chuckled, a glimmer of amusement flashing across his eyes as he licked his lips. “I’ll bite.”

Vegeta nodded, and looked off to the side, as if his focus were drawn elsewhere. “Not long ago, you said something interesting to me—how you thought you were the type of Saiyan I’d always wanted you to be.”

“Yes,” Kakarot said, his smirk widening, and Vegeta immediately wanted to punch him in the mouth for it. “How easier this would all be for you if you stopped denying that fact.”

Vegeta nodded, and his eyes swept back to Kakarot. Kakarot shifted back slightly, as if taken aback by the burn of Vegeta’s gaze.

“Yes. You’re right,” Vegeta said. “Had I found you like this on the day I first came to Earth, I would have recruited you in an instant to take Raditz’s place at my side. I would have killed for something like you.”

Kakarot’s interest seemed thoroughly piqued now, and Vegeta was shocked at how easily he was able to spin every word—how effortless it was to lie when his words were couched in old truths.

“And as much of a nightmare dealing with you has been, I’m finally beginning to see you for what you are,” Vegeta went on. “You’re an opportunity I’ve been denying for too long—I see now that the infection was a blessing. Not a curse.”

Kakarot’s eyes narrowed, and Vegeta found it hard not to feel sickly pleased at how uneasy Kakarot suddenly appeared.

“I… don’t follow.”

“You were right.” Vegeta’s voice was firm as he stepped closer to Kakarot, leaning into _his_ space until Kakarot was almost backing away. “Everything you’ve said since we made planetfall—you’re right. How easily we could take Earth, together—how much is simply waiting for us if we just simply reached out to _take_ it. Earth, the galaxy—” Vegeta grabbed Kakarot by the shoulder straps of his armor, pulling him close. “ _You were right._ It could all be ours, if only we stopped denying our natures. That much, you’ve shown me, Kakarot.” Vegeta paused, his tongue flicking across suddenly dry lips. “It’s time to finish what I tried to start so many years ago.”

Vegeta’s skin felt hot, as if the heat of his lies were burning him from within—and when Kakarot reached up to roughly grab Vegeta’s wrists, his eyebrows narrowing in suspicion, it took all of Vegeta’s resolve not to crumble to his knees.

Everything hinged on his performance now.

“I don’t understand,” Kakarot hissed, his hands pulling Vegeta’s off his armor. “Why the sudden change in attitude now? I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t _believe_ me?” Vegeta snarled, hitting Kakarot’s hands away and grabbing him again, more forcefully this time. “What’s there not to believe? You’ve seen me like this before, Kakarot—only this time, I’m not so cowardly as to hide from my own desires—last time, I tried to hide myself behind Babidi’s possession, but now—that’s not an option.” Vegeta pulled Kakarot closer, his jaw clenching as he went on. “I’ve tried to bury my nature—and nearly fucking succeeded with all the years I spent wasting away on Earth, like some caged beast. But you’ve reminded me what I could be. What I really was, all along.”

Something dark flickered in Kakarot’s eyes. “Then prove it.”

There was no room for hesitation—not anymore, not with Earth racing closer each second.

So Vegeta didn’t give himself the chance to think twice about it before he pulled Kakarot to himself, and crushed their mouths together.

He felt Kakarot stiffen in his grip, but Vegeta didn’t relent—Vegeta channeled all his hatred into the kiss, biting into Kakarot’s lip until he could taste Kakarot’s blood on his tongue. He found he only wanted more—he imagined himself tearing open Kakarot’s throat with his teeth and watching him bleed out on the gravity deck as the light left his hateful eyes. Vegeta clutched to the fantasy as his tongue worked its way past Kakarot’s lips, forcing a surprised moan from the monster’s throat.

Vegeta brought his hands to the side of Kakarot’s face, his fingers digging into Kakarot’s jaw hard enough to bruise. Kakarot tasted like Goku beneath Vegeta’s lips; his body felt like Goku’s against Vegeta’s own. His scent was Goku’s, and it was just enough to suppress the revulsion that rose like bile in Vegeta’s throat

“Vegeta,” Kakarot hissed, finally pulling away from Vegeta’s kiss, and Vegeta felt a hollow sort of satisfaction at the way Kakarot’s body shivered against his own. “Vegeta, I—”

Vegeta’s hand reached behind Kakarot’s head, his fingers pulling at Kakarot’s hair.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Vegeta snarled.

“ _Yes_ ,” Kakarot hissed through grit teeth, his smirk beginning to lift the corner of his mouth once again. “Do you see now, Vegeta? All I’ve ever wanted was to serve you, my Prince.”

“Then serve me.”

Kakarot leaned in to catch Vegeta’s lips, but Vegeta held him back at the last moment.

“Train with me,” Vegeta growled against his mouth. “We have two days until we get to Earth—I want us to be prepared.”

“You don’t think us powerful enough already?” Kakarot said, his voice dipping into a low purr.

“I don’t want us to merely be powerful,” Vegeta said. “I want us to be gods.”

Kakarot licked his lips, a dark fire glimmering in his gaze. He radiated a terrifying delight at Vegeta’s words, and Vegeta loathed him for it. He wanted nothing more than to wipe Kakarot’s hideous grin off of Goku’s lips, and paint the walls of the gravity deck with Kakarot’s blood.

But Vegeta swallowed down his disgust and cleared his throat.

“Cap4, set gravity to five-hundred G.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

As deeply as Vegeta hated Kakarot, he had to admit that the bastard followed orders well.

He had taken to Vegeta’s demand for training with a reckless, gleeful abandon, and the two of them had spent every waking hour available to them working each other over on the gravity deck. Or at least, every one of Vegeta’s waking hours—as far as Vegeta could tell, Kakarot still never slept.

Which was fine by Vegeta When he retreated to his cabin, Kakarot never followed, opting to stay under the grueling crush of artificial gravity while Vegeta sought rest. The first night, Vegeta had retired to his cabin and fallen trembling to his bunk—he hadn’t expected Kakarot to stay behind. He had been prepared to take Kakarot into his bed if he had followed, and had all but resigned himself to that inevitability. He was willing to do anything to maintain his deception, regardless of the cost.

But the universe had granted him this small, paltry mercy.

By the second night, Vegeta lay alone in his bunk, aching and sore from the effects of the effects of the gravity and Kakarot’s blows. Kakarot sparred with a punishing ferocity, and Vegeta felt like he had been fighting an animal in a way he had never felt while sparring with Goku. The result was a bone-deep exhaustion and a pain that ached in every muscle of his body. Sleep should have come easily, but Vegeta found himself lying awake.

Panic churned like magma within Vegeta, and he tossed restlessly in his bunk. His cabin felt hot and suffocating around him—the whole ship did—and his heart was beating so hard against his chest he thought it might burst before he ever had a chance to see Earth again.

But Earth had been closer than he realized—Vegeta was still awake when he felt the ship suddenly _shift_. It was a movement that made the entire ship tremor like it had been knocked off-course, and beyond Vegeta’s porthole, the stars took on their bright, pinpoint shapes, no longer warped in unrecognizable streaks.

The ki-drives had kicked off, and the conventional thrust engines hummed to life as the ship translated out of subspace. Vegeta’s fists clutched at his bedsheets so tightly that his knuckles blanched from the effort.

They had reached their destination.

Vegeta brushed aside his exhaustion and leapt from his bunk, hastily pulling his clothes back on before leaving his cabin. He immediately dropped down to the deck below and scrambled toward the bridge, distantly feeling Kakarot’s ki begin to approach the same direction.

Upon reaching the bridge, Vegeta stumbled toward the captain’s seat, barely sitting down before his fingers flew across the terminal’s touch-controls. The main viewscreen lit up, and Vegeta saw the Sun distantly take shape on the image-feed. The ship was approaching from above the ecliptic, coming in at a steep inclination; according to the plotted trajectories glowing beneath Vegeta’s fingertips, Capsule4 would soon slingshot around the star before making its final approach to Earth.

It was only a matter of hours now.

Vegeta forced himself to take deep, even breaths, struggling to maintain his composure as anxiety ebbed and pulled within him. The sound of Kakarot stepping onto the bridge behind him only made matters worse.

“We’ll be making planetfall in a few hours,” Vegeta said before Kakarot had a chance to speak. “I’m going to prep the landing pod. Make sure you’re ready.”

Vegeta spun the captain’s chair around with the intent of standing up, but found Kakarot already looming behind him. Before Vegeta could move, Kakarot had leaned forward, grabbing the seat’s armrests and trapping Vegeta where he sat.

“Are you sure _you’re_ ready?” Kakarot’s voice edged somewhere between a soft growl and a purr, but Vegeta could detect the hint of suspicion beneath the smoothness of his words.

“Yes,” Vegeta said, too eagerly. “Of course.”

“Then tell me, Vegeta,” Kakarot challenged. “How will you react when our friends try to stop us?

“Goku’s friends, not mine,” Vegeta corrected—that much at least wasn’t a lie. “I won’t care if they get in the way.”

“And our sons?” Kakarot pressed, leaning in closer until Vegeta could feel his breath on his skin.

“They will simply have to come to see things our way. And if not—” Vegeta paused, briefly biting into his lip. Everything hinged on his next suggestion—this whole, outrageous gambit fell on whether or not Kakarot took the bait Vegeta was about to dangle before him.

“I want you to Fuse with me,” Vegeta finally breathed.

Kakarot raised an eyebrow, and Vegeta could see the muscles in his jaw clench almost imperceptibly. But the curiosity that flickered across his face was unmistakable.

“Fusion,” Kakarot repeated. “You want me to Fuse with you.”

“Yes,” Vegeta said, licking his lips as he raised a hand to graze Kakarot’s jaw. “We’ll be unstoppable.”

Vegeta’s gaze burned into Kakarot’s, knowing with painful clarity that what Kakarot had told him on the engine deck was true—now that he knew what to look for, Vegeta couldn’t look at Kakarot without immediately seeing the worst parts of himself reflected back at him. Things he had thought he’d destroyed—the old greed, the hatred, the desperation—it all flickered across Kakarot’s surface like a dark mirror.

Vegeta knew exactly what it would take to seduce him—because Vegeta knew what it would have taken to seduce _himself_ not so long ago.

All Vegeta had to do was offer him a taste of power.

“Imagine,” Vegeta went on. “Imagine the power we could wield in that state—”

“None of them would be able to touch us,” Kakarot whispered, and finally he was pulling away, letting go of the armrests to stand up. Vegeta felt his body slacken in relief. “Not Gohan, not Gotenks, the Namek—they’ll all be powerless before us.”

Vegeta watched as Kakarot’s eyes looked to the bridge’s main view-screen, his eyes drawn to Capsule4’s trajectory towards Earth.

“You should have suggested this sooner,” he finally muttered. “We could have practiced.”

“I needed to heal, and I needed to feel you out—really see if we were compatible for it,” Vegeta lied. The truth was that he had been too terrified to bring it up until now, convinced that Kakarot would see through his entire ruse. “I waited too long to work with you, but now that I have—I’m certain we can do it.”

Kakarot glanced at him briefly. “Are you familiar with the steps? The movements?”

“I’ve watched Trunks and Goten manage it countless times—and they’re mere children.”

Kakarot nodded. “Very well. When we make planetfall, we’ll Fuse.”

Vegeta stood up from his seat. “Good. I’ll let you know when we’re ready for descent—be ready for my order to go.”

Vegeta didn’t wait for Kakarot’s response as he moved to leavethe bridge, but Kakarot’s smirk was wide enough to see even from the corner of Vegeta’s vision.

 

* * *

 

 

The planet glimmered below them like a marbled star, wisps of cloud and aurora dancing along the thin ring of atmosphere as the landing pod began its descent. Vegeta found it difficult not to stare—of all the things he had seen in the past months, Earth was still the most breathtaking by a long shot, and Vegeta was struck by the strange ache forming in his chest. He didn’t have a name for it, but somewhere in his mind, he found himself settling on the word _homesick._

He only wished it were strong enough to drown out the rising dread just beneath it.

Vegeta drew his attention back to the control panel at his fingertips, quickly skimming the gauges and readouts before him. The pod was two-thousand kilometers above Earth’s surface and dropping, decelerating at a gentle ten G. The comm line was blinking furiously.

Cap4 spoke over the noisy shaking of the landing pod. “ _Incoming signal from Earth; tightbeam transmission from Capsule Corp—_ ”

“Decline,” Vegeta snapped.

“Bulma?” Kakarot spoke up beside him.

“Presumably,” Vegeta muttered, trying his best to ignore the passenger at his side. Kakarot sat with his arms crossed over his armor, smirking as he gazed out past the pod’s viewport. Vegeta tried to not to look at him closely, not even in short glances—it felt too much like looking back into another lifetime, like Vegeta was watching himself the first time he had ever made planetfall on Earth.

Kakarot began to speak, but Cap4 interrupted again.

“ _Incoming signal from Earth; tightbeam transmission from Capsule Corp—”_

Impatient, Vegeta began to move his hand towards the comm panel, intending to shut it off completely, but felt Kakarot’s hand fall on his wrist.

“Let’s hear what she’s so desperate to say,” Kakarot said. “Play transmission.”

Suddenly, Bulma’s voice crackled through the speaker, her voice loud enough to fill the narrow cabin.

“—you better fucking answer me, Vegeta,” she was shouting, and Vegeta winced at the volume. “I didn’t give you clearance to land—you’re completely breaking quarantine right now, if you two are still contaminated with that shit, do you have any idea what sort of damage you could do down here? _Answer me_ , Vegeta—what the fuck are you doing going radio silent like this, this is _completely_ beyond belief—”

“That’s enough,” Vegeta muttered, and moved again to shut off the comm panel, but Kakarot clamped down tighter on Vegeta’s wrist.

“No, let me answer her,” Kakarot said, and before Vegeta could protest, Kakarot had already tapped into the comm panel.

“Hello, Bulma,” Kakarot said, smirking as he spoke into the transmitter. “I think you’ll find that your failed “quarantine” is soon to be the least of your problems.”

Bulma’s voice stuttered into silence, and for several moments, nothing but the sound of radio static crackled through the comm line.

“Goku?” Bulma finally said, her voice quieter. “Goku, was that you—”

“No, Bulma,” Kakarot said. “I’m not the Goku you were expecting, but I’m sure we’ll have the pleasure of meeting soon enough.”

“...what?” Bulma said. “I don’t understand—Vegeta? Are you there, can you—”

But Bulma’s words fizzled and sparked to nothing as the pod was engulfed in the white-hot ion stream of re-entry, and Vegeta shut off the comm array entirely. He closed his eyes against the blinding light that seared across the viewport, and tried to fight down the rising nausea that had nothing to do with their deceleration. He could almost feel the pull of Earth below them now.

They were home.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kakarot was the first to leave the landing pod.

 Vegeta hung back in his seat as he watched Kakarot lift the hatch and hop out onto the impact crater surrounding the pod. Beyond the cliffs and buttes that dotted the landscape, Vegeta could see the sun just beginning to dip below the horizon. _The sun._ Just feeling its light on his skin was enough to make Vegeta feel lightheaded.

 But he gathered his strength, and left the pod on shaking legs. They threatened to give out beneath him the moment the air hit his lungs; he had spent so long aboard Capsule4, cocooned for months in the stale, metallic smell of recycled air, that to finally gulp in Earth’s atmosphere bordered on euphoric. He leaned heavily against the landing pod as breathed in, wanting nothing more than to collapse to his knees and clutch at the soil beneath his fingers.

 But Kakarot was quick to disturb him from his brief respite.

“Interesting place to land,” he said, looking down at Vegeta from the lip of crater, gloved hands on his hips.

“Thought you’d appreciate it,” Vegeta said as he crawled up to stand at Kakarot’s side, and raised a hand to his brow to shield his eyes from the low light of the sunset. The landscape looked different in this lighting, the shadows longer and deeper than what was burned in Vegeta’s memory, but the terrain was unmistakable.

It was the wasteland where Goku and Vegeta had first fought each other.

It made sense that it was the first place that had come to mind when Vegeta had chosen a landing site—it was remote, and barren of any sort of meaningful life. If Vegeta lost control of the situation, they were at least far enough from any major settlements to do any damage. And in this light, with the cool breeze blowing dust into Vegeta’s face, it didn’t seem so unlike the unnamed planet that had cursed their journey so many weeks before. It seemed as good a place to end this—one way or the other.

“I feel approaching ki,” Kakarot said, and Vegeta saw him stiffen as he sensed out the approaching energies.

“It’s Gohan… and Bulma,” Vegeta said. He could only guess that Bulma was coming in some vain attempt to preserve her pointless quarantine.

“They must not realize what they’re walking into,” Kakarot sneered.

“They will soon enough,” Vegeta muttered, and he turned to face Kakarot. “We should Fuse.”

Kakarot raised an eyebrow. “Now?”

“Yes,” Vegeta said, firmer, leaving no question that this was a command, not a request. “I want to know it can be done. And before any backup arrives.”

“Very well,” Kakarot said, walking away from the impact crater until he was several paces from Vegeta. “Do you wish to review the moves?”

“No,” said Vegeta, pulling at the hem of one of his gloves, as if straightening his clothing were somehow going to help. “There won’t be any need.”

“Our power levels need to be even,” Kakarot reminded him.

“I’m aware,” Vegeta said, casting a side-glare in Kakarot’s direction as he moved toward a spot several feet to Kakarot’s side. It wouldn’t be difficult, not with the after-effects of the Potara Fusion—without trying, Vegeta knew exactly where Kakarot’s body was oriented in space, where his power level rested, the timing of his pulse, the rate of his breathing—“Take your position, Kakarot.”

Kakarot nodded, and he and Vegeta simultaneously stretched their arms to their side.

“ _Fu—_ ” they began in unison as they moved toward one another, their arms arcing in sync toward the space between them. Vegeta felt his heart racing, but forced his ki to stay low and even, in time with Kakarot’s. There would be no room for failure—not now. Vegeta tried not to think of Bulma and Gohan approaching with each second.

“ _—sion—_ ”

Their arms snapped to the opposite side again, their legs mirroring the movement. Vegeta knew that even if the Fusion succeeded, there was no guarantee his insane idea would even work. He tried not to think about that, either.

“ _Ha!”_

Finally, their arms bent toward each other, like arcs of lightning jumping across the ether to touch, and their fingertips made perfect, blistering contact. For a moment, they were still, an image of crackling, sublime chirality, and before Vegeta could regret his decision, he could feel himself flowing into Kakarot, and Kakarot into himself. The light that burst around them was blinding, and the two were consumed in it, drawn into one.

In their place, something entirely new had taken shape.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing Vegeta was aware of was darkness.

It was everywhere, and it gripped every part of him no matter how much he struggled. Like a thousand fingers digging into him, the blackness held him tighter the more he pulled, but beneath it all, Vegeta could feel exactly what he was looking for, so he fought against its grip even harder.

This fusion felt different than the Potara fusion, that much he was sure of. Somehow, he could feel time flowing slower here, in this negative space between himself and Kakarot, and Kakarot’s pull just didn’t feel as inescapable as he imagined it would. The Potara fusion had felt like death and rebirth all at once; this felt like little more than a handshake in comparison.

Vegeta pressed downward, diving deeper into the murk, guided not by sight or touch or any sense he could put a word to, but something else entirely. But he could feel exactly what he had come for somewhere below him. He pulled harder, propelling himself with a burst of ki, and finally he came free of the tangled, blackened mess he had cut through.

He looked down. First he saw his gloved hands splayed before him, then the tips of his boots below—like a lucid dream, he could control his body, or whatever projection of his body this was, but every movement felt slow, almost unreal. He looked around him, and realized the darkness had taken on an almost shimmering, fluid quality around him—but his boots made contact with something solid that stretched infinitely around him. He took a tentative step forward, and the sound echoed into a distance he couldn’t fathom. It was like walking through the Room of Spirit and Time, but in negative.

In the distance, Vegeta saw a flicker of colour.

Vegeta moved forward, breaking into a run that echoed loudly with each footfall. He couldn’t waste time. The Fusion was finite, and he could only keep Kakarot at bay for so long—he raced forward as quickly as he could through this shapeless dreamscape until finally the colour before him grew stronger, more solid. When it finally resolved into a familiar orange, Vegeta couldn’t help himself from crying out.

“Goku—” his breath caught in his throat as he called out. “Goku!”

Slowly, the orange figure took on a clearer shape, and Vegeta could hardly breathe when he saw for certain that it was Goku’s form. Goku was sitting, arms curled around his knees, his head bowed, like he were curled into an upright fetal position. His skin and gi were bright, so bright it almost hurt Vegeta’s eyes in the dimness, like he was illuminated from within. Vegeta could see no other source of light in the milky darkness.

“Goku,” Vegeta cried out, hoarse as he finally came within an arm’s length of Goku. Vegeta collapsed to his knees, his hands pulling at Goku’s arms, desperate to see Goku’s face—he half-expected all of this to be some cruel trick, and to find Kakarot’s face staring back—

But when Goku finally lifted his head, Vegeta was certain.

“Goku… Goku,” he whispered, trying not to choke on his words as he reached out for Goku’s face, his fingers shaking as they grazed Goku’s cheek. “It’s… it’s really you?”

“Vegeta?” Goku rasped, as if it had been eons since he had last used his voice, and down here, in this endless darkness, maybe it had been. He didn’t fight as Vegeta tugged at his arms again, this time managing to pull Goku to his feet. Goku’s hands found Vegeta’s face, just as Vegeta’s hands had found his, and Vegeta found himself leaning into the warmth of his palms. He hadn’t realized how cold it was here—not until he felt Goku’s skin against his own. “Vegeta, what are you—”

“I came for you,” Vegeta said, and he tugged off his gloves before pulling Goku’s face again toward his own. He needed to feel Goku’s skin beneath his own fingers, without any barrier—he had come this far, and if he never had the chance again—

Goku looked around, trying to take in their surroundings. His eyes were clouded, like he had just woken from an impossibly long sleep. “You… you Fused with him?”

“I had to… I had to,” Vegeta breathed, pressing himself close until his face was buried against Goku’s neck, and Vegeta shuddered as Goku’s scent washed over him. “It was the only way I could get to you.”

“Vegeta, this is dangerous, you shouldn’t have done this—”

And then as if on cue, the entire dreamscape seemed to shudder around them, and a terrible, rumbling groan echoed in the distance, like something was trying to rend their entire dark universe apart.

“I know,” Vegeta said, holding Goku tighter. “I know, but we don’t have much time—I can already feel the Fusion becoming unstable, I—”

Vegeta felt Goku’s hands in his hair, and he had to will his legs not to collapse beneath him as he shivered in Goku’s embrace

“Vegeta,” Goku breathed against Vegeta’s ear, and Vegeta’s chest throbbed at how Goku’s voice cracked. “Vegeta, you… you have to get out of here, you—”

“No, not until I—,” and Vegeta choked on his words again, taking a single, shuddering breath before he could continue. “From here… from inside, I can destroy him—I can burn away all the parts of him that have done this to you—”

Vegeta could feel it, even now—with his sense that wasn’t quite touch but wasn’t quite sight either, he could feel the darkness that had taken shape in Goku’s soul—the parts where Kakarot’s influence had taken root in the deepest parts of him. But Vegeta hadn’t been prepared for the sheer scope of it—it wasn’t until he was here, on the inside, that he could see the full extent of the rot. He felt like a surgeon, breaking open Goku’s ribs only to find a twisted network of metastases that had burrowed far deeper than he was willing to cut.

But he had no choice.

“Vegeta, you can’t do that,” Goku pleaded, and Vegeta could feel Goku’s tears trickling onto his face now. “If you do, it will—it will—”

 _It will destroy every part of me in you,_ Vegeta wanted to finish, but he couldn’t find the strength to form the words.

“I know,” Vegeta whispered, his vision becoming watery as Goku trembled against him. In some way, he had known this since he had faced off with Kakarot on the engine deck. Vegeta’s lingering presence from the Potara fusion, his dreams, his memories—every part of Vegeta had contaminated Goku just as badly as any pathogen.It had been the key all along that Kakarot had used to free himself from his own cage deep in Goku’s psyche.

And all Vegeta had to do now was set flame to all of it.

“Vegeta, please don’t do this,” Goku begged, and he pulled away just enough to look Vegeta in the eyes now, his tears spilling quickly down his cheeks now. “Please Vegeta, I can’t let you do this—”

“I’m sorry,” Vegeta said, and he pressed a soft kiss to Goku’s mouth before his own voice could break into sobs. Goku wept against him, holding Vegeta so tightly that Vegeta almost didn’t feel it when the world started shaking around them again. At the their feet, Vegeta could see glassy cracks beginning to break through the darkness.

He was out of time.

“Goku, I’m sorry, this is the only way—the only way I can stop this,” Vegeta’s voice was soft beneath the rumbling around them, his cheeks wet as he held Goku’s face in his hands. He refused to let him look away—not now. “I’m sorry—”

“ _Vegeta_ —”

“I love you.”

Vegeta kissed him again as the world began to crumble in earnest around them. Vegeta felt himself being pulled away as the Fusion came apart, but as it did, Vegeta reached out into the void as deeply as he could, searching out all the flecks of himself embedded within Goku—

Then _pulled._

It was a pain unlike anything Vegeta had ever felt, a deep tearing that reached to the core of him—like every nerve was being cut down to the root with a molten blade, until every last cell in his body felt like it had been shredded and burnt to nothing. He would have screamed had his voice not died somewhere in the receding darkness.

It wasn’t until a blinding whiteness enveloped him that the pain finally stopped.

Vegeta opened his eyes, and found himself in his own body, lying prone on the hard ground. The Fusion—whatever it was, however short-lived it had been—was already over. A slow breeze whistled across the ground, kicking up dust, and in the distance, Vegeta could hear the whirring of Bulma’s aircraft as it landed, but somehow everything seemed strangely silent.

The realization hit him like cold water: it was Goku’s ki. Vegeta couldn’t feel it—at least, not without trying. But the place in the back of Vegeta’s mind where Goku’s ki had shone like a beacon for months—across thousands of miles of empty space, or pressed close in a narrow bunk—had suddenly gone quiet, leaving a cold chill in its wake.

Vegeta pulled himself up until he was sitting, and looked to his side. Goku was still on the ground, groaning as he roused back to consciousness, and Vegeta immediately crawled toward him. He leaned over Goku’s form, a hand reaching out for Goku’s shoulder to reach him gently.

Vegeta could hear the doors of Bulma’s transport hissing open, followed by the slow footfalls of her and Gohan approaching, but it didn’t matter—they might as well have been in another galaxy for all it meant to Vegeta. The only thing he could see was Goku.

“Goku,” he rasped, shaking him until Goku’s eyes finally fluttered open. Bulma and Gohan were calling out now, but their words were just noise, as easy to ignore as the breeze gusting through the rocks.

“Goku,” Vegeta said again, his hand pressing against Goku’s face to cup his cheek. Goku’s eyes opened wide, and Vegeta saw no trace of Kakarot in his gaze.

“Goku—”

But Vegeta’s mouth stilled when Goku’s hand wrapped around his wrist, firm enough to pull Vegeta’s hand away, and Vegeta recognized something like fear glimmering in Goku’s wide-eyed stare.

Vegeta stiffened in Goku’s grip, and the question that suddenly tumbled from Goku’s lips wounded Vegeta worse than any ki-blast ever could have.

“Who—who are you?”

Vegeta pulled away, shaking as he let the realization sink in. He had succeeded, just as he had expected. His hands fell away from Goku’s form, his fingers grinding into the dirt as his eyes began to blur. Kakarot was destroyed. Kakarot was destroyed, and that had to be worth the sacrifice Vegeta had made.

Vegeta fell against the ground, and wept

* * *

  



	14. Anamnesis

* * *

 

The days blurred together at Capsule Corp. almost as badly as they had onboard Capsule4, but Vegeta hardly noticed. He had turned off every light and drawn the curtains the moment he had come to his room, and had hardly moved from his bed since. He wondered how long it would take him to die there, alone in the darkness. He wondered if maybe he already had. This wasn’t what he remembered the afterlife being, but maybe this time he had finally been sent to a hell that suited him.

And if this were hell, he couldn’t have chosen a better devil than Bulma Briefs to appear uninvited at his doorway.

“Close the fucking door,” Vegeta managed to snarl at her before burying his face deeper into his pillow, trying to shield himself from the light spilling in from the open door.

Bulma said nothing as she clicked the door shut, the light from the corridor extinguished behind it. There was a long silence, long enough that Vegeta grew impatient enough to finally roll over and face her.

“Well?” he hissed. “Can I help you?”

“It’s been three days of this, Vegeta.” Vegeta’s vision adjusted quickly again to the shadowy room, and he didn’t miss the circles beneath Bulma’s eyes. “You about ready to talk to me about what happened, or—"

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

Bulma made a loud huffing noise. “Oh,  _ fuck  _ this.”

Bulma didn’t wait for a response before she rounded the bed, came up to the windows, and threw the curtains wide open. Sunlight spilled into the room, and Vegeta’s eyes burned from the assault.

“What in hell, woman—” Vegeta barked, covering his eyes as he jolted to sit up in his bed.

“I don’t want to do this, Vegeta,” Bulma said, turning around to  face him again. “But you’re not leaving me much of a choice, here.”

“Fuck off—”

“Vegeta.” Bulma’s voice was deadly. “You can lie here and waste away for as long your fucked up little heart desires, but you  _ have  _ to talk to me.”

“Why?” Vegeta shouted. “Why do  _ you  _ care—”

Bulma’s laugh was joyless. “Are you kidding me?” She rubbed at her brow as she began to pace up and down the length of the windows. “First of all, our  _ son  _ has been asking for three days straight now why his dad’s been too sick to see him, and I’m running out of excuses for you, Vegeta—second of all, Gohan won’t stop begging me for answers either, pleading with me to keep running tests on  _ his  _ dad because he’s convinced there’s been some sort of brain damage, which—yeah, I can’t blame him for thinking that—”

“You can poke and prod at Goku all you want, but I can assure you you won’t find anything,” Vegeta spat.

“Okay, and since when do you call him  _ Goku? _ ” Bulma was almost yelling now. “What the fuck is going on, Vegeta? First, you two show up crash-landing to Earth after total radio silence— _ Fused,  _ blowing apart every quarantine protocol I had, and now suddenly Goku claims to have zero memory of who you are, and you’re calling him Goku, and—” She rubbed her hands down her face. “Please? Help me understand? For Goku and his family, if no one else?”

Vegeta sat at the edge of the bed now, his fingers clutching tightly into the mess of bedsheets. He looked away from Bulma.

“It’s…” Vegeta paused, trying to take a calming breath. It didn’t work. “I wouldn’t even know where to fucking start.”

Bulma moved towards the bed, taking a seat next to Vegeta. Vegeta bristled at her proximity , but said nothing. He looked away from her for a long time, trying to find the words to start, but all he found was a vast emptiness that stretched impossibly wide within him.

“Listen,” Bulma said, quieter now. “I tried searching for some answers on my own. I… downloaded some of Cap4’s videologs.”

Vegeta stiffened. “...Videologs?”

Bulma nodded beside him. “Yeah. Cap4 kept video logs of all the public areas of the ship—the bridge, the engine deck, the gravity deck, airlocks—kind of a black box feature, in case of malfunction, you know? Failsafe on top of failsafe—first rule of spaceflight.”

Vegeta looked at her, only to find that she was deliberately avoiding eye contact now.

Vegeta’s stomach clenched.“What did you—”

“Well, first of all, you two, uh, sure fucked a lot on the gravity deck,” Bulma coughed. “Not what I designed it for, but—”

“This conversation is over,” Vegeta said, his face burning hotly as he moved to stand up, but Bulma grabbed his arm.

“Vegeta, stop. I’m just… I’m just pointing out that clearly your relationship with Goku changed while you were on that ship.”

A thousand images that Vegeta had desperately been trying to forget burned suddenly at the forefront of his mind—the taste of Goku’s lips against his own. The feeling of Goku’s nails dragging down his back. The warmth of his body as he slept next to Vegeta. The touch of his hands on Vegeta’s body.

The light of his smile, even in the darkness of Vegeta’s cabin.

Vegeta shuddered, his embarrassment suddenly swallowed up by the suffocating black hole in his chest.

“Yes,” he finally admitted. 

Bulma nodded. “So what happened, Vegeta? Why doesn’t he remember you anymore?”

Vegeta closed his eyes. He didn’t want to relive this—he didn’t want to speak about it out loud, as if putting words to it was what would finally make it all painfully, irreversibly real.

But he owed them an explanation. For Goku, if for no one else.

“You knew he was acting differently,” Vegeta finally began. “How he—was becoming someone else. He tried to kill me, and it only got worse after that. The pathogen—you figured out that it could reverse neurological trauma, yes?”

“Yes,” Bulma said. “I mean, that was all preliminary data, but—”

“Well, it did. We figured out that it was reawakening Goku’s infant conditioning—basically undoing the head injury he sustained after landing on Earth. We settled on calling this version of him ‘Kakarot.’”

Bulma blew out a breath. “Jesus.”

Vegeta’s hands curled into fists,. “But… it was actually worse than that.”

“How could it possibly be worse than an unchecked Saiyan hell-bent on blowing you out an airlock—”

“The Potara fusion,” Vegeta said. “It… proved to be a complicating factor.”

Bulma was silent, an eyebrow raised as she waited for an explanation. Vegeta took another breath before he went on.

“It’s hard to explain to anyone else, what that Fusion really entailed—Goku and I combined everything when we fused. Mind, body, spirit—thoughts, memories. When we unfused, the separation wasn’t as clean as we had thought. I could feel Goku’s ki all the time, like he was still a part of me. We didn’t even realize how much we had left behind in each other until the infection brought it all out.  And this… Kakarot entity, however you want to describe it—he used the parts of me left behind to take shape in Goku. To overtake him completely.”

“Like… a Majin transformation?” Bulma mused.

“Yes, only the possession was coming from within.” 

“God,” Bulma said, running her hand through hair. “I’m sorry, Vegeta. If only I had known—”

“I wanted to contact you, but it was too dangerous with Kakarot in control,” Vegeta muttered. “But it wouldn’t have mattered. There was nothing you could have done. It’s why I had to do what I did.”

“The Fusion…?” Bulma asked. “When we found you, after you had landed—”

“I had to,” Vegeta said, his voice dropping into a strangled whisper. “It was the only way I could get inside, and—the only way I could fix it was to… was to…”

Vegeta’s head fell into shaking hands. “I thought that if I erased every part of myself in him, it would destroy Kakarot, too. And I was right.” 

Vegeta felt Bulma attempt to offer a consoling palm on his shoulder, but he recoiled away from her touch. “I was completely fucking right.”

“Vegeta… I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. You should be thanking me,” Vegeta said, unable to stop the bitterness from seeping into his voice. “He would have killed everyone if I hadn’t done what I did. You have no idea how many people he slaughtered out in space, in cold blood. He would have done the same here.”

Vegeta didn’t miss how Bulma’s voice shivered when she spoke again. “What do you want me to tell him?”

Vegeta’s hands fell into his lap, and he leveled a glare at Bulma. “I don’t fucking care. Tell him whatever you like. But if he wants to hear it from me, it’s not happening.”

“Really? That’s it? You’re not even going to speak to him—”

“Haven’t I done enough, Bulma?” Vegeta snarled

“All right. I understand,” Bulma conceded. “That’s your choice, and I get it, if you can never talk to him again. But please, Vegeta—you can’t stay in this room forever.  I know we parted on terrible terms when you left for space, but god, I never wanted to see you suffer like  _ this _ .” She paused, shaking her head. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to hide from him, or yourself—but you can’t live like this.”

Vegeta said nothing. Instead, he looked back down at the bedsheets and contemplated letting himself be swallowed up by them again. This entire conversation had drained what little energy he had—distantly, he could still feel the sucking wound in his chest, but he was too exhausted to care.

“Well, thank you for talking to me, Vegeta,” Bulma said, and for a moment Vegeta feared she was about to reach out and touch him again, but she kept her hands in her lap. “I know this was hard for you. When you’re ready to come out, I’ll give you anything you need.”

She stood up from the bed without another word, and Vegeta listened as her soft footsteps crossed the bedroom floor, followed by the click of the door opening and shutting behind her. Vegeta stared straight ahead, his eyes bleary in the face of the sun and blue sky shining in from the window.

By the time he could sense that Bulma had reached the far end of the corridor, Vegeta stood up, and drew the curtains closed once again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was another full day before Vegeta begrudgingly admitted to himself that Bulma was right.

He couldn’t live like this. He didn’t know what, exactly, his alternative was—but grieving to death in a dark room wasn’t an answer.

The bed felt stronger than any gravity simulator, his body so heavy against the mattress that he couldn’t fathom ever finding the strength to pull himself out of it again. But he did—by breaking it down, step-by-step, he was able to pull down the sheets. Then lift his sore body up. Swing his legs over the side of the bed. Feel the cold floor under the soles of his feet.

Before he could overthink it, he had stood up, and his legs carried him seemingly against his will to the bathroom. The shower he took was long and scalding, as if it were possible to burn some semblance of feeling into himself through his skin. 

It wasn’t.

He dressed himself in a fresh training suit, taking a moment to relish the feeling of his gloves against his hands. When everything around him felt like it had crumbled to ash, it felt strangely comforting for such a small familiarity, no matter how fleeting.

The corridor was quiet as he stepped out of his bedroom, and he focused on putting one foot in front of the other, until he had descended the staircase to the ground floor. His body moved thoughtlessly, automatically toward the gravity room, but he stopped while passing a bank of windows. Even through the glass, he could feel the warmth of the setting sun on his skin, and paused to feel it. The day was already ending, but that hardly seemed to matter.

He stepped outside. 

The air was still hot, even as the dregs of afternoon drained away, and Vegeta remembered it was late summer. He had been gone for so long, he had forgotten what season it was on Earth—had forgotten about seasons entirely.

He sat down on the lawn, crossing his legs to sit back on the soft, plush grass. A warm breeze graced his cheeks, and he closed his eyes, choosing to focus on his breathing. It was the oldest meditation technique he could think of to center himself. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. If his thoughts drifted, then let them. If the pain rose up again to take him, so be it.

What he wasn’t expecting was for something to suddenly slam full-force into his side.

“Dad!”

Vegeta was knocked onto the lawn, Trunks’s arms wrapped around his middle and squeezing harder with each moment.

“Trunks,” Vegeta said, blinking as he pulled himself back up, but Trunks held steadfast, looking up at him with wide eyes.

“Mom said you were sick!” he said. “Are you feeling better?”

“Much better,” Vegeta lied. 

“It’s not contagious, is it?” he asked, his wide eyes glimmering with apprehension. “Like that time I caught the stomach flu from Goten?”

“No, kiddo,” Vegeta said, and ruffled Trunks’s hair. “I promise it’s not contagious.”

“That’s good,” Trunks said as he finally released Vegeta from his hug. “Goten said his dad’s memory’s all messed up? That didn’t happen to you, did it, Dad?”  

“No.” Vegeta felt his chest tighten, and he quickly stood up, brushing himself off as he did. “Don’t worry about that—look, why don’t you show me how well you’ve been keeping up with your training while I was gone?”

“You bet!” Trunks shouted, jumping back and ascending to his Super Saiyan form, flashing a thrilled grin at his father as he did.

Vegeta didn’t have to force it when he grinned back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Vegeta quickly lost track of time again as he played with Trunks in the yard. Their “training” had quickly devolved into an elaborate game of tag, Trunks a golden blur as he flew from spot to spot in the grass, Vegeta aiming light ki-blasts in his direction. It was childish, but Trunks seemed pleased with the speed exercise, and it was the least Vegeta could do after having been absent for so long.

“I’m impressed,” Vegeta said, smirking as Trunks dodged another ki blast. Bulma wouldn’t be pleased by the scorch marks in her lawn, but that was a problem for later. “You’re able to hold your Super Saiyan form much longer than before.”

Trunks beamed up at him. “Yeah, me and Goten have been practicing lots!”

“Hm. It shows—”

Vegeta opened his mouth to order Trunks to perform another exercise, but he was suddenly distracted by an all-too-familiar sensation. Goku’s ki. It had appeared out of nowhere—he had clearly used Instant Transmission to materialize on the Capsule Corp. property—and he wasn’t suppressing it, either. It was clear and bright and too painful for Vegeta to possibly ignore.

The ground felt like it was opening up beneath Vegeta’s feet.

“Dad?” Trunks said, his transformation flickering out as he returned suddenly to baseline. “Are you okay?”

“It’s getting late, Trunks,” Vegeta said abruptly. “You should head inside and wash up for the night.”

Goku’s presence shouldn’t have bothered Vegeta as much as it did—Vegeta had been sensing it on and off for days. Goku had been making no attempt to hide it, and he had been frequenting Capsule Corp. almost daily. But that was when Vegeta had been cocooned in the safety of his bedroom—here, out in the open, he was completely exposed.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t face Goku—not now, not after everything—

“But Dad—”

“Trunks,” Vegeta said, more impatiently this time. “Your mother is going to be angry if you stay out here too late. We’ll play again later.”

Trunks mumbled and pouted as he dragged his feet back to the house, and Vegeta watched him until he was inside. Goku’s ki felt like it was coming closer, and Vegeta’s hands shook at his sides.

Vegeta steadied his breath, dropping his ki as low as possible before swiftly flying up into the night.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Vegeta sat at the cliff ledge, his arms folded over his knees, drawing them up toward his chest to shield himself from the cold. The breeze carried a chill with it as it passed across Vegeta’s skin, and he found himself curling in on himself tighter as he surveyed the dark landscape beneath him. It looked different like this, under starlight—but it felt just the same.

The breeze gusted harder, suddenly climbing in pitch until it was whistling between the rocks, and it was loud enough that Vegeta almost didn’t hear the light tap of someone landing on the ground beside him.

“Vegeta.”

Vegeta’s eyes glanced quickly to his side, and was greeted by the sight of Goku standing at the cliff’s  edge beside him.

Vegeta stiffened, and tried to ignore the painful uptick in his heartbeat. His first instinct was to leave, but how long could he go on delaying this?

They were going to have to face each other sooner or later.

“Goku,” he said, his voice deliberately cold. “I didn’t sense you approaching. Suppressing your ki, I see.”

Goku stood still at his side. “So are you.”

Vegeta glanced briefly upwards, and could see even in the darkness that Goku’s face looked pained, drawn into something like a scowl. It didn’t suit him.

Vegeta looked away, toying with a pebble between his fingertips before tossing it over the ledge. “How did you find me, then?”

“Because I can’t stop seeing this place in my mind,” Goku said, so quiet that Vegeta had to strain to hear him. “I keep feeling drawn to it, over and over again—I thought it might be the same for you.”

Vegeta didn’t answer, even if it were true. But Goku couldn’t possibly understand the significance of the place—

“This is where we met,” Goku went on. “I know that much.”

_ It’s also where everything ended _ , Vegeta thought immediately, and swallowed down the nausea that licked up his throat.

“How do you know that?” Vegeta asked, finally looking at Goku directly.

Goku was staring into the distance, his fist clenching and unclenching at his side.

“Because my memories are still all there,” Goku said, gesturing vaguely at his temple. “It’s just that... the parts with you are  _ gone.  _ It’s like my whole life’s been turned into a jigsaw puzzle—but you’ve gone and picked out some of the pieces. A  _ lot  _ of the pieces. There’s just chunks of emptiness where I know something really important used to be.”

“Goku—”

“Do you have any idea what this is like, Vegeta?”

Vegeta tried to ignore the swell of pain in his chest, channeling it into anger instead.

“Don’t think to lecture me on suffering, Goku,” Vegeta snarled, pulling himself to his feet. “You’ll brush this off, just like you always do. You’ve managed without me before—you’ll learn to do it again.”

Vegeta turned to leave, but Goku reached out, catching him by the wrist. Vegeta tried to pull away like Goku had somehow burned him through Vegeta’s glove, but Goku held fast.

“Vegeta,” Goku said, and Vegeta was stilled by the pleading in his voice. Vegeta had been numb for days, consumed by an emptiness that had seemed at one point like it would go on forever. He wished now he could go back to that. Anything would have been preferable to the terrible ache that filled him now.

“Goku, I had to do what I did, you were going to hurt everyone—” Vegeta grit out between his teeth, and it was unclear if he was making excuses to Goku or to himself. “If I hadn’t—”

“I know,” Goku said, and his grip on Vegeta’s wrist loosened, his hand finally falling away when it was clear Vegeta wasn’t about to make a run for it. “I know what you did. I know why you did it. Bulma explained it to me.” Goku looked away, gnawing briefly at his bottom lip. “I just don’t think she told me everything.”

“Whatever you think it is, it’s not important—”

“What were we?” Goku asked, his voice quiet, but undercut with a desperate fervor that caught Vegeta off-guard. “You and me—I know there was something important between us. Everyone tells me we were rivals—enemies, even. But that doesn’t feel right. I know that’s not what we were.”

Vegeta shook his head. Trying to put a name to what they were seemed so futile now, so absurd—enemies to allies?  _ Lovers?  _ Did that really cover it?

“Were we—mates?” Goku asked, and Vegeta coughed out a mirthless laugh.

“Goku, please,” Vegeta said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It hardly matters now—”

“It does matter,” Goku said, moving closer to Vegeta. “Because I keep remembering… this one thing. There was a dark place, and I was trapped there—but you came to me, and… Kami, Vegeta, I know the way I felt. I can still feel it.”

Vegeta swallowed hard. “Goku, you don’t—”

But Vegeta stopped mid-sentence, distracted by a glint of metal in Goku’s other hand, half-hidden from Vegeta’s sight.

“What is that?” Vegeta said, eyes narrowing. “Is that—the Dragon Radar?”

Goku tried to tuck it away, but it was already too late.

“What are you doing with that?” Vegeta hissed.

“I want my memories back, Vegeta,” Goku said firmly, but even in the darkness, Vegeta could sense the heat spreading across Goku’s cheeks. “I’m going to make a wish to the Dragon.”

“You can’t do that!” Vegeta said, his fists clenching. “You can’t just undo everything I’ve sacrificed! It’s too dangerous—you could reawaken Kakarot all over again, you don’t know what you’re—”

“It’s a risk,” Goku said, looking down at the radar in his hands. “Shenron will know for sure. If it’s too dangerous, I won’t do it. But I have to try.”

“Goku—”

“I want you to come with me,” Goku said. “That’s why I came out here, Vegeta. I wanted… to ask you to come find the Dragon Balls with me. And if I can’t make my wish, then… so be it. At least I’d have the chance to spend time with you.”

Goku’s mouth was a grim line, his face rigid as stone. Vegeta hated the expression on him—it was such a far cry from his natural, effortless joy that Vegeta wished Goku would just fight him where he stood, punishing him with his fists until Vegeta bled out on the ground.

But Vegeta knew no amount of blood spilled could ever undo his mistakes.

“You know that’s how me and Bulma met?” Goku said, and finally Vegeta caught a glimpse of a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “We went on a quest to find the Dragon Balls together. Everyone I’ve ever met… I owe to the Dragon Balls.” Goku looked up from the radar, his face finally softening as he met Vegeta’s gaze. His eyes were wide and pleading in the darkness. “Please, Vegeta. Give me a chance to get to know you. I’m willing to start from scratch and do it all over again, if you are.”

Suddenly, the numb shell that had protected Vegeta for days seemed to crack apart, crumbling until there was nothing left but the raw, aching wounds beneath. It had been days since Vegeta had had the energy to cry, but suddenly he felt his eyes burning.

“You might not like the person you meet,” Vegeta tried to warn him, but he was ashamed at the sudden hoarseness of his voice.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Goku said, tucking the dragon radar into his pocket. “But that’s another risk I’m willing to take.”

Goku extended his hand to Vegeta, but it was indistinct behind the blur in Vegeta’s eyes.

“So what do you say, Vegeta?” he asked, softly. “Will you come with me?”

Vegeta wiped at his eyes with the back of his glove, his breath shaking as he considered the opportunity. But his body felt the truth long before his mind could catch up, his answer rising immediately and fully-formed from the bone-deep pain that had paralyzed him for days.

Vegeta nodded.  _ Yes. _

Vegeta reached out for Goku’s hand with his own, and Goku’s smile was blinding.

“Okay,” was all Vegeta could find the strength to say. “I… I’ll come with you.”

“Thank you, Vegeta,” Goku beamed. “Thank you.”

The warmth in Goku’s gaze was almost more than Vegeta could withstand, and he gently pulled his hand back to himself—but Goku hardly seemed to notice, and was already pointing somewhere in the distance.

“The radar says the nearest Dragon Ball is due north,” Goku said, looking to Vegeta before glancing to the horizon again. “If we follow the stars, we might even be able to find our first one before sunrise.”

And then Goku was walking away, already set on their first goal as he began to move north. As if sensing Vegeta hesitating behind him, he looked back over his shoulder, his smile bright as daylight as he gestured toward the distance.  

And finally, Vegeta moved to follow him—to go north, to the horizon, to wherever Goku wished to lead him.

He would have followed him to the end of the universe if he had asked.

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to take a moment, now that we're at the end (as bittersweet as I've left it) to thank everyone who read this and stuck with it until the end. I haven't had the chance to reply to all your comments—mostly because I've been left speechless by all your support, and can honestly say that some of your feedback has moved me to tears, as silly as that sounds. I could not have asked for readers kinder or more thoughtful than yourselves.
> 
> Again, thank you all—I don't think I would have made it this far without you! <3


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